My Easter

Breathbloom, the resurrection lily
spent on its stem,
the pale throat thrown back
announcing—what?
Behold, all at once,
the flesh-like knot
undone, each petal released, their beauty un-
mistakable and
already gone.
~
I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.
~
How then explain the resilience of any sacrifice,
when your body becomes
a willed disclosure of flight, a transience
arrayed, briefly, to make plain what will soon be lost?
How await the expectant,
render such an arrival
when the flower comes apart with an ease and abandon
hands cannot stop,
or don’t want to?
~
The lamb that taketh away, taketh away.
~
But what has been taken—
your body, broken now,
over and over—has been taken without enmity, without struggle even.
Only, that grief, this elegy, is remarkable
for its insistence.
Appearing to withdraw without yet leaving,
you remain, incur trespass, until such a breach leaves you
errant, wandering in this garden
among your relics, your ruin.
~
I followed, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold
of me, but I left the linen and ran off naked.
~
Give me this—
one more day, one more day.
That I might have it,
your just once embrace.

Joshua Kryah
My Easteris reprinted from Glean (Nightboat Books, 2007).