The women followed, and they saw the tomb
and how his body was laid.
Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.
On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
—Luke 23.55-56
The grave, how anguished a stillness.
A seed not moving. Not even trying.
The actual weight of zero,
the mass of absence.
Too late now for watches
in the watches of mourning’s
unhurried gestation.
Soil slowly draws the flesh
into its loving embrace,
its soft, dark bed.
Those remaining do not remain
but are changed
no less than the remains.
If there is a birth canal
might this be death’s?
Grief gradually becomes
not a road but a landscape,
and then a road,
a wanting become waiting
for what is
but is not yet revealed.
The stone not yet rolled
from the womb,
not knowing what,
only that
something that is still shall be,
the mystery unveiled
only by losing the veil.
Waiting but only for this moment.
The quiet leaves coming to,
and the weeping of the women
under the small-birded sky.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
April 11, 2020