Lazarus

Lazarus

I imagine four days
were enough.

Enough darkness.
Enough stone.
Enough of the body
beginning to surrender itself
to the earth.

Enough grief outside the entrance,

the living saying what the living say
when there is nothing left to do.

Then life comes
not as an idea,
not as comfort,
not as explanation,

but as a person
standing before the sealed place
and speaking.

Three words.

Lazarus, come forth.

And because love had called him
by name,
he came.

Each time I hear the story
I think of another night,

rain on the Oregon road,
the bridge slick beneath my hands,
the rope,
the cement block,
the terrible obedience
I had almost given
to despair.

Then life arrived
through a phone,

not thunder,
not angels,
not light splitting the sky,

only three small words
sent by someone who loved me:

Please choose life.

And I did.

Climbing back
from the edge.
Throwing the rope,
the block,
the whole dark argument
down into the gulley.

When the cement struck water
the sound rose through the rain

like stone
being moved from stone.

Some resurrections
are not witnessed.

No crowd gathers.
No one unwraps you
from the graveclothes.

There is only the wet road,
the black water,
the body shaking,
and the voice
that reached you in time.

Still, life begins again

on a dusty plain in Judea,
and on a bridge
in the Oregon rain.