12/30 john speaks. happy easter!

The only thing between Mary’s tears writing
“gone” on her face and his tomb
were the craters we’d make in the dust chasing him.
I admit, neither of us knew the gravity of that morning,
but I know when you’ve heard the eternity in a man’s chest,
seen him order father-son to an open mouthed tempest,
heard him call you friend, seen him raise a man from the dead,
then watched him wrapped up and planted in a garden,
if you hear he’s not where he said he’d be, you run.

Peter kept three paces behind me, not for ability so much.
I heard once, every denial is a step back, like stepping out of people
you were, leaving their ghosts like buffers in the space between.
and I don’t want to get touchy subject but it’s never
the one running faster who has something to hide.

The truth about someone can be so much harder
when you love them. And maybe that’s why I stopped
short. Maybe, it’s why Peter stepped down first.
feeling the pull weight of conditions in his commitment.
Maybe I should have felt mine.
Jesus called himself a stream of living water.
Maybe I envied Peter's dry throat. Maybe I was scared
to see Him still lying there.
I’ve wondered if decaying corpses and open graves break
rivers of poison in our noses because our bodies aren’t
ready to be there yet. But this morning, there was no odor.
Only a pile of linens, their emptiness denying death’s hold
on an Only who didn’t deserve it. A pile of linens who played
the holes in His hands like trumpets making thunder so earth
shattering we felt it rolling stones in our chests.
He’d always said he was spinning himself a cocoon,
and when the silk fell away a new temple would spread wings.
More real than a lightning strike, gentle as a dove,
He tabernacled the room, saying “Peace be with you.”
Like we’re all slow runners and
those three days were three paces toward us.
Stepping through the ghosts of our past.
See. Hear. Forgiven.

We locked ourselves in contemplation for fear of the Jews.
But inside that house, a man called God spoke
“Peace be with you,” to ten men,
breathed His spirit into us,
like a wax seal of ownership,
like fire falling in raindrops.

We left a narrow path hotter than the blood of stars,
every footprint a crater of white clouds declaring,
“Peace be with you, Jesus is Risen. “