April is Poetry #7

on the oldest grave
cold stories told before dawn
then light, light, light, light



It’s Easter.  And oh yes, I love me some jelly beans.  Big, fat, pink ones especially.

But I also love deep, ancient church services filled with lovely theatrical tellings of our stories.

Especially when those stories are told in graveyards.

A church in New England that we belonged to once was lucky enough to have an adjacent cemetery, which meant a century or more of dead souls surrounded them. Easter sunrise service began at the oldest gravestone, where the story of Genesis was told in the complete darkness before dawn.

Then a torch was lit, and the congregation processed toward the church, stopping to tell more of the Easter story through the Old Testament and into the New, until they reached the sanctuary, where the lights there were thrown on, and everyone marched in, singing and lit from within.

It was pretty spectacular.  As are pink jellybeans, little boys in Easter suits, eggs hidden within easy reach, and being part of a story that goes so far back that you need lots of people tell it.


More daily haiku at Liz's place.