patrickmurfin

I couldn’t decide on which of these images better fit my Spring/Easter/Resurrection theme—realism or whimsy.  So here they both are.

This poem was written a number of years ago.  As I recall it reflected the very earliest signs of spring coming that I saw as I made my morning walk to catch the train from work.  It was late February, perhaps, or the first week in March that I first heard the cardinal that year.

But it may be more apropro this year, when the winter has been long and hard and Easter early.  We broke a record for snowfall in McHenry County yesterday when six inches of wet heavy snow burried the county.  I lost track of how many big snows we have had.  Tomarrow is Easter, and I have yet to see my first crocus.

But the cardinal is singing in the dawn tree tops and the red-wing black birds in last years cat tails.

RESURRECTION*

From that frigid morning

            when the fog of humanity

            hangs palpable before our faces

            and that fat red sun pops           

            before our eyes at the far end of           

            the reaching blacktop

Then, when from the highest,

            barest twig the cardinal sings

             his whistle in the graveyard,

Our hearts know resurrection and murmur—

            Yes, yes.

We are a cold people in a cold land

            and every creeping inch

            of yellow willow hair,

            every footprint

            in newly giving earth,

            every ratchet tap of woodpecker

            on lifeless wood

Resonates with resurrection and nods recollection.

There is no wonder that in hot lands,

            perpetual in green,

            moist and ever fertile,

The natives snickered at tales

            of a hanging god,

            turned on naked heels

            and ran to sensible deities

            who would not abandon them

            only to hound them on return

            with foolish promises.

But here, at turning time,

our arctic hearts surrender

            to the sureness of the resurrection

            that surrounds us,

Embrace the fabulous

            as confirmation of the fact

            made real around us,

And in the echo of this miracle

understand redemption, too,

            In the merciful thaw

            Or our glacial souls.

--Patrick Murfin

*From We Build Temples in the Heart Skinner House Books, Boston, 2004