Come Easter by Jake Berry

Jake Berry

Easter is unaware

How carefully her wardrobe

Has been prepared,

dazzling, even underground,

as she rushes through

the undergrowth, dried thicket,

fresh vines of stems and lilies

as green as baptism is quickening.

Something made the old women cry

In their new hats and pastel corsages.

It’s the same thing that made them cry

thirty years before in taffeta nightgowns.

(It was not their husbands).

If you are afraid the feast will spoil

don’t threaten us with an early summer.

Let the Sabbath have its peace.

We read these winds all too well.

Bring the dead to life

And they will drink.

Bring the living to life

And they will sleep.

Bring them both to Easter

And they will rise

Into glad embrace

Of God’s exuberance.

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-Jake Berry is a poet, musician and visual artist. The author of Brambu Drezi, Species of Abandoned Light, Drafts of the Sorcery, Genesis Suicide, and numerous other books. He has been an active member of the global arts and literary community for more than 30 years. His poems, fiction, essays, reviews and other writings have been published widely in both print and electronic mediums. He regularly records and performs his songs solo and with the groups Bare Knuckles, Rayner Maeve, The Ascension Brothers and The Strindbergs. Cypress, his 12th solo album, was released in 2018. He lives in Florence, AL with his wife and a wild assortment of cats.