Easter Day: Station XV and a new Villanelle

 

image courtesy of https://lanciaesmith.com

The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia!

For this Easter morning I am posting the fifteenth and final sonnet from my Stations of the Cross sequence, but also adding a new poem, a villanelle for Easter which I composed one dark morning whilst out walking my dog. Lancia Smith has made a beautiful image with lines from the new poem.

This sonnet, and the others I have been posting for Holy Week are all drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press here in England. The book is now back in stock on both Amazon UK and USA and physical copies are shortly to be available in Canada via Steve Bell‘s Signpost Music. The book is now also out on Kindle. Please feel free to make use of these sonnets in church services and to copy and share them. If you can mention the book from which they are taken that would be great.

As usual you can hear the poems by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

XV Easter Dawn

He blesses every love which weeps and grieves

And now he blesses hers who stood and wept

And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s

Last touching place, but watched as low light crept

Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs

A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.

She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,

Or recognise the Gardener standing there.

She hardly hears his gentle question ‘Why,

Why are you weeping?’, or sees the play of light

That brightens as she chokes out her reply

‘They took my love away, my day is night’

And then she hears her name, she hears Love say

The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.

 

On Easter Day 

As though some heavy stone were rolled away,

You find an open door where all was closed,

Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

 

Lost in your own dark wood, alone, astray,

You pause, as though some secret were disclosed,

As though some heavy stone were rolled away.

 

You glimpse the sky above you, wan and grey,

Wide through these shadowed branches interposed,

Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

 

Perhaps there’s light enough to find your way,

For now the tangled wood feels less enclosed,

As though some heavy stone were rolled away.

 

You lift your feet out of the miry clay

And seek the light in which you once reposed,

Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

 

And then Love calls your name, you hear Him say:

The way is open, death has been deposed,

As though some heavy stone were rolled away,

And you are free at last on Easter Day.