He Sent the Mourners Away

He Sent the Mourners Away

(“But he took her by the hand. ’Get up, child,’ he called.”) Luke 8:54)

They had been wailing outside, the
mourners
who came to grieve for the dying daughter.
Barely catching their breath before the next sob started,
the took their place along the mudbrick walls.

A stranger approached, escorted by her father,
the stranger spoke, “Don’t cry. She isn’t dead, she’s asleep.”

That’s when the mocking laughter began.
How did he know? Had he been here with the family
from the first moment she fell ill? How did he know?
How dare he give false hope, how dare he
talk such myopic nonsense?

The father waited expectantly; one ear tuned to the wailing,
one to the stranger’s confidence. But she was dead.
How could a father believe? How could he expect what
had never happened before?

But the girl heard only one thing, deep in the sleep of death,
“Get up, child.” Slowly the stranger raised her up, his hand around hers,
while bedside they brought her food.

Oh for the hand that reaches through the curtain of death,
for the voice that speaks even when laughter mocks with its hired breath.
Oh for the touch that extends through the doldrums,
the words that speak costly sentences for no charge.

The father was silent, his daughter in his arms.
And tears mixed with a new sort of disbelief. He
touched her face, her warm and flushed face,
laughed to himself a new sort of mirth
that looks death in the eye and renews his joy
on the day that seemed darker than all others,
for a gift that seemed so delayed.

And he sent the mourners away.