An Easter Poem

Those of you moms who have often told your childbirth story may enjoy this Easter poem I wrote to celebrate the childbirth experience as a fundamentally gospel event. The first 2 verses are told from the perspective of Mary the mother of Jesus, and the 3rd verse from the perspective of an unlikely sort of second mother to Jesus, a personified Mother Tomb, who has been known to have other nicknames like The Pit, The Grave, Sheol, or 6-Feet-Under.

I wrote it to be read aloud as part of an Easter Sunday worship celebration but that did not get to happen, so I read it in a graveyard instead, which actually turned out to be a more appropriate setting. I read the first verse in the shadows of a tomb the size of a small stable, the second verse at the foot of an oak tree, and the third verse leaning over a tombstone. I wish I had invited some friends to be there for the reading, but it didn't feel lonely, and I must admit I felt less inhibited about reading it with the emotional and physical oomph that it needs.

My English major friends, Sandi? Emily? can tell me whether the linking of the Resurrection Event to a childbirth experience pays proper respects to those Metaphysical conceits we learned about in college. Herbert, Donne? I'm hazy on that.

While of course this poem is a creative work which uses some artistic license, I meant it to honor the Resurrection in a biblical way. If you are one who likes to make sense of allusive references in a poem, Exodus 39:27-28, Leviticus 8:30, Leviticus 12, Leviticus 15:19-20, Numbers 8:14-19, Psalm 22, Isaiah 51:1-3, Isaiah 54:1, Isaiah 64:6 Jeremiah 20:14-18, John 3:1-16, Acts 2:14-36 Romans 8:18-25, I Corinthians 15, Ephesians 1:4-6, Hebrews 2:10-18, Hebrews 9, I John 2:28-3:3, I John 4:2, Revelation 7:9-17, Revelation 19:7-16 are helpful places to look for understanding this poem, and of course re-read the various accounts of Jesus's birth, death, burial and resurrection from the four Gospels.

Enjoy! and may Resurrection News be the Hope that never lets up, lets you go, or lets you down. That barren life-less cave called a Tomb has been miraculously transformed and renamed: Most Fruitful Womb!

GIFT WRAP

Nativity
They brought royal gifts, myrrh, incense, and gold, when they visited,
And oh in such beautiful wrap
Many yards of finely-twisted linen.
I would have swaddled you, my king-son, in this linen at your arrival.

But at your birth we were trespassers in a pole-barn
I was squatting on hay,
Clinging to the rope for support
Resting against a wooden beam between contractions.

I puked in a manger, but the pigs were intrigued.
I pooped on the ground, but the donkeys didn’t seem offended.

My bag of waters broke open with a gush and spurt.
Then I entered the earthy, birth-y power of expulsion, with noisy grunts and grimaces.

Joseph laid fresh straw and sat under me to catch my wriggly firstborn son
As you dropped out of your womb of forty weeks.

Jesus, Savior of the World! just as the angel announced.

You gasped your first breaths,
Howled hello,
Sucked sweet drops of milk from my breast.

Joseph rummaged and found my bag of cloth strips.
(They were clean but stained by several menstrual cycles.)
He used one to wrap the placenta.
He used one to absorb my flow of blood and clots.
He used one to blot the blood and mucus from your face and hair.
He used one to soak up the slop in the manger.
He used the others to swaddle his sort-of son.

I would have wrapped you in finely-twisted linen, gift to the world that you are.
But those visitors from the East came months too late.

So I’ll save this linen for your someday wife,
Such fine swaddling for children of your own.


Burial
At your death those Roman trespassers slung you up on a beam of wood
Used rope for extra support.
I squatted in the hay beneath your feet
As you named John my sort-of son.

You sucked sour drops of wine from a sponge,
Howled for your Father,
Then gasped your last breaths.

These linen strips are going to wrap my king-son after all.

Born-again Nicodemus takes them gently from me.
He uses one to wipe the urine and excrement from your legs.
He uses one to mop the mucus and blood from your face and hair.
He uses one to bind up the intestines ballooning from the hole in your side.
He uses one to swab the shredded skin on your back
He uses the others to swaddle his sort-of father.

The time has come to use the finely-twisted linen and myrrh.
No hope now of meeting a wife or firstborn son of yours.


Resurrection
They have come to mask the stench of decaying flesh and feasting maggots,
These weeping women carrying spices on a Sunday morning.
But they are hours too late.

Though my name is Tomb,
I too now have an earthy, birth-y power of expulsion
Didn’t you feel the quake of my grunts and grimaces?
Even the hired watch could not catch my wriggly firstborn son,
As he dropped out of his womb of forty hours
Jesus, First-fruits of the Dead! just as the angel announced

Welcome women, with your gifts of incense
You are too late for burial rites
But just in time to celebrate a raising.

Come and collect these strips of finely-twisted linen.
Blood-stained though they are,
This gift-wrap shall be used again:

Resurrection clothing for all God’s children
Who are sown in me
And most certainly shall (thanks to their sort-of brother)
Be raised imperishable.