Easter Sunday:

Strip away the perfect lilies

massed along, across the chancel steps,

the bright reflecting sight and sound of brasses,

and the white and gold of paraments and stoles.

Set aside two thousand years, almost, of holy words

and gestures, the jostling flotsam of an epic tidal surge

of global custom and conviction, conquest too.

Try to ignore this new spring sunlight,

the steady warming of the soil, the waking birdsongs,

green and early fragrant air. Reject all this

and you are left with a report, some blood-stained bandages

in a vacated garden cave, several startled temple guards,

a gaggle of bewildered witnesses, and through all this

a dawning hope, so strange yet sure it drives you

to your trembling knees, groping for fresh syllables

and sounds to shape this ever new, yet ancient cry.

The Lord is risen...risen indeed!

Seeker