A Coming Alleluia by Erika Takacs

They say there will be no Easter this year.

No hats.

No hunts.

No hymning.

No lilies to fill a bright room

with a fanfare of pollen.

No garden, no angel,

no victory.

They say that our journey

born in sackcloth and ashes

will lead us at last

to nowhere.

And so we sit worried

that the tomb, this year,

will be found, for once,

still full.

That Mary and the others

will leave with their spices

and come back home with nothing.

That this year the women will finally end their work –

anoint and then

leave empty.

Ssh. Be still.

Do you not hear her?

Clucking close by like an old mother hen,

brooding and sighing and

stretching her wings?

Fear not, she says,

for I did it before –

in the silence

in the dark

in a closed and locked room

in a world that had known

only death.

Did I not once prove

once for all

that there is nothing you can do,

no decision you can make

(for good or for ill)

that can stop

me

rising?

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Erika Takacs is the Rector at Episcopal Church of the Atonement, Chicago and posted this poem to Facebook on March 18, 2020.  It was published in Earth & Altar, an online magazine on April 2, 2020. 

Shared with All Saints on Palm Sunday, April 5, 2020