Erect No Statues Here

Erect No Statues Here

(“He has been raised. He isn’t here. Look, here’s the place where they laid him.” Mark 16:6b)

The empty is thick with silence,
the vacancy less than we expected. How far
can a dead man get on foot?

The morning is obscured with weeping,
the rising sun paints sharp shadows in the garden.
How far can we go before
our intentions are detected?

The tomb is cold with absence,
the man in white only added to our questions.
How high can we believe when we cannot touch
the one we came to love?

Erect no statues here,
do not write songs, either praise or dirge,
do not gather a chapel here,
do not preach or record a podcast from the
only place on earth where
he does not abide.

How long will you stay, how long astounded,
there is more life ahead, more mercy outside the garden.
The earth is heavy now with a doula’s work,
the sky is written, the birth announcements sent,
the ears are ready for new-song,
the eyes for dove-pairs and geese-flocks
that split the open air. The have known all along,
they have sung, they have felt the pregnant age
already begun.

It’s a shock to the senses to awaken, ennui
settles on our souls before we know it. It’s the rocks
that keep on playing the stream’s bluegrass, and
the meadows are the womb where deer and racoons
begin.

I tell you know what I know by heart,
you cannot kill love, you cannot destroy the art
of creation when the Divine is the maestro,
and the Spirit the song.