Work Text:
Very early in the morning,
while the holy dark still covers the world,
the woman comes, bearing spices,
to the garden.
She comes to do the age-old work of women,
to tend to the mystery of life and death,
in the twilight space
between night and day,
uncertain.
She finds a stone rolled aside,
the herald of a mystery without a name,
and in that first moment of twilight uncertainty
there is a spark of something
that runs wilder and faster
than the men she hastens to find
and beats at the edges of belief
like a heart-bird against the cage of ribs.
And so when the men are gone she stays.
She stays, head bowed and weeping,
as the new morning sun rises
around and behind and within her,
touching her face with tremors of light
and tingling across her skin
until she looks
and sees
for the first time in this new light
the Garden.
The trees are dancing.
The leaves and the flowers are ablaze
with the light of the newborn sun,
fire dancing in waves
across the green surface of life.
A vine trails to the very lip of the tomb
and bursts forth in exuberant flower.
The woman thinks of seeds,
a tremulous, unknowing joy born in her heart.
And then, out of the very flame
that dances over the leaves of the cypress tree,
she hears a voice:
“Woman, why are you weeping?”
The voice is wild and strong and earth-filled,
and she does not turn to look,
for in turning she might not find.
But she says, “Tell me,”
and the voice from the fire speaks
and names her “Mary!”
And she turns and knows him instantly.
He is ablaze with fire like the garden around him,
the image of a seed
sprouted and grown to new and astonishing life,
and the woman,
Mary,
looks at him and understands
that he is gardener and seed and Rabbouni.
Time stills,
recapitulated and overturned all in a moment,
and for the second, the third, the eternal time,
a woman looks upon the face of God
and recreates the world.