Each morning you and I 

are Lazarus and we eat 

the sun with pursed lips 

so that darkness can 

fill the room. 

We read the scripture 

to fall asleep,

to think of that dark, 

dark home we come from.

We are the women 

who went to clean the body

and their unbidden curiosity

and the stone tomb, unsealed.

We peek in with dark, open mouths

to see the glorious ascension―

the nothing inside―

and the evidence of shadow

which proved eternity infinitely beckoning

in the silent blue of the morning sun. 

We are the heaving of the stone― 

the casting of the light―

into the empty catacomb

where Romans laughed at

the death of a peasant God.

We rise again, Lazarus-like,

in a hope there is nothing inside

except the casting off of shadow,

the darkness of a tomb,

and the yellow glimmer of morning light.