by Werner N. Aase
Easter
That Jesus lived through death
To accomplish all creation
Reveals too little and too much:
The stir of evening through a house
Just opened to the spring.
The brood of night is day
As darkness kindles dawn
Above this lake whose shimmering veil
Slips in about me -- So
Embracing what it holds
From my regard and aspect.
April's promise is capricious longing
When, as soon as face is turned,
Winter's arbor casts out that shadow
Which firms near moving ice again
And makes the flesh and frozen earth entwine
Until it seems no warmth will ever pierce
To free the heart to stir once more
--a fallacious, weak, contemptible awakening--
Until we, my dog and I, sulk yet again
In about the hearth to wait.
Not in a million years does light
Respond to me like your touch
Upon my collar setting things to right
Before I leave mornings through the door;
Your love like the clarity of morning
Needs no complex response
Nor meaning bordered by tedious design;
We travel toward our rising unencumbered
By those small intents that diminish love
From friendship through continual appraisal
Grinding down.
We wish each other well
And allow for frailty
Knowing weakness,
By humility affirmed, is strength;
We take each others part--
Rejoice at each day's bestowing
Each to each ungrudgingly.
We love as children love the dawn.
My twilight walk toward town again
Did not disturb the lingering chickadees
Busy at the feeder as hungry night approached and cold
Each waiting in impatient, staid solicitude
For a companion to complete the furtive peck
At seed and flight away.
I saw no weepy sentiment, no planned design,
But only that here a standard held
Among these feathered reptiles
That humankind could but aspire to
That brought the mind to a whispered breath
Of revelation.