Tag: rising

To Rise Again

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—Jesus explains

Not just the first crocus bulb poking
from the ground, but its pollen
shining saffronly on the legs of a bee.

The reverberations of a hammered
dulcimer or the puff of sweetness escaping
between peel and pith of a ripe tangelo.

It’s riding the elevator after the doctor
tells you, we can’t say why the scans
are suddenly clear, or, if you’re exhausted
from trying, time to surround yourself
with people you love. It’s waking

in the middle of the night, looking out
at the silhouettes of trees and realizing
there is nothing lonely about silence.
It’s cruising a wide-open Montana highway

or swinging your hips to the rhythm
of a street-corner bucket drummer
and daring the stares. It’s not the cicada
blooming from its shell as much

as the shell itself, balanced
on the finger of a little girl, then
tumbling along the grass tips
among the unkillable dandelions.
~Tania Runyan from “What It’s Like to Rise Again”

We’re each given a fresh start each day;
even when it was a fitful sleep,
and we’re fearful about what comes next,
or if there will even be a “next”…

Jesus explains what it is like to rise above the darkness;
bold, unafraid, leaving behind, neatly folded, the vestiges of death.

He gives us each reason to get up every morning,
surrounded by those who love us.

Even when crushed and broken,
He rose up so we can follow.

Everything’s going to be all right…

Here I Am…

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I must go in; the fog is rising…
~Emily Dickinson, her last words

And when it lifts, the fog lifts
what it buried, the tall pines
stand taller, the valley breathes
a magnanimous air, the green
grass hills stir in wonder,
the fleeting white clouds flee
with their shadows, a bale
of hay makes the case for being
alone, and what was erased
and briefly forgotten retrieves
its mother tongue, speaking
truth to the hour. And to be
a witness to such plumes of mist
dissolve into the vastness
is to be the vastness, the Earth’s
step our step, the observer
and the observed holding hands
with time, blankets of grief
the years have cottoned over
uncovered, the pallbearer––
coffin on shoulder––in view
of the mound of soil up ahead
summoned to his depths;
dear father, here I am.
~Howard Altmann “The Fog” from In This House

Fog swallows us whole, not unlike being lowered into the depths of the grave.

Immersed so thoroughly, surrounded and muffled,
yet still breathing in the chill mist.

But then the fog lifts. It rises. And takes us with it.

Father, here I am, holding hands with time.

AI image created for this post