Poem Tuesday

Blogger friend Claire Beynon at Icelines

has started posting a poem every Tuesday,

along with numerous other poets, and I've

decided to tag along. Thought I'd start

with something topical:

Easter

Barely ten, I bolted from Rose Chintz china

and linen, dinner still barely warm.

My pink coat, made over from another April,

another sister, lay rumpled beside white

patent leather and gloves soft as a rabbit’s ear.

The woods were green with four o’clock April light

and hardly a wind rippled the hazelnuts,

the nettles just beginning to line my path.

I ran and leapt over logs and ferns

until I reached the enormous maple

behind Rupert’s broken barn. I climbed

and swayed in the thinning branches,

stretched as far as that tree would allow

and sang as loudly as I can remember:

Jesus Christ is risen’ today, a-a-a-a-a-le-e-lu-u-jah.

Our triumphant holy day, a-a-a-a-a-le-e-lu-u-jah.

There was not a soul in sight

that green and billowing afternoon

from my bluejay’s perch above the world.

And no organ padded the velvet air,

no plaster saints, no crucifix.

I sang until I trembled with hoarseness

and felt the wind gone from my lungs.

Then silently I slipped branch by sturdy branch

to the earth. Took the long way home --

through the deserted orchard, past the filbert grove,

up a slow hill to my house.

Copyright, T. Clear

Originally appeared in Manzanita Quarterly