For Resurrection, or Newness of Spirit

In this darkness binding you like grave cloths,
impenetrable as night within night,
not even the smallest whisper
reaches your shrouded silence.
Everything has stopped growing,
everything has stopped moving.

Now listen, you who are dead.

Hear the heave of heavy stone,
see a sliver of light.
Hear the scrape of footsteps,
silence broken forever

by birdsong.

Now
the ancient silence breaks,
your eyes open wide
to colors--
colors within colors,
reds more brilliant than a cardinal's wing,
blues deeper than sky,
yellows more golden than sun.

May this garden now open to you
as you step out of end
into beginning--

Eternal spring full of song
of grass growing and buds bursting
and everything reaching up
as in one charged dance
as in electric life
as in light bursting
within and without,

and warmth on the back of your neck
and inside your dry bones
and within your weary mind

Everything is new.

May you know
deep down, within, without--

Now everything,
everything
is new.