April was National Poetry Month

I keep a lot of the parts of my life pretty separate. I teach, and I have a work account and webpages that I use to communicate with students and colleagues. For church, I have this blog and an email account, which I also use for family and friends. I'm a poet, and I have a separate email and webpage for that. This past month has been National Poetry Month, and I helped plan a whole bunch of events at school for students and faculty. And I've been writing a brand-new poem every day all month. They haven't all been good, and all of them will need either to be revised or just forgotten. But, since it's the last day of the month, I'll post one of the new ones here. Several of the poems I have written this month relate to the Bible study I've been doing every week at church, or to the season of Lent and Easter. This was one of them.

Lazarus


He did not face death alone.
His last sight of his beloved sisters' faces
the crows feet around their green eyes,
their dark hair braided--
his last breath inhaled into their chests
still connected to them.
His naked body feather light under their touch
as they bathed him, perfumed him,
wrapped him in the ivory linen.

Imagine his surprise!

His eyes flitting open in the cave,
feeling the cold
around his warming skin
the hard stone under his shoulder blades.
The pain not just vanished
but the feeling of a new heartbeat
the stale air of the cave swirling
in the clean pockets of his lungs.
To get up and walk was nothing.
For the rest of his life
he would dance.