Lazarus, Come Forth

I originally posted this Narrative Poem in 2010 . . . recirculating for new readers.



He comes for me, my friend, my brother, but I am four days dead in this tomb.
The weeping of my sisters, their pleading and tears, has pulled him to this place
where my flesh already rots behind the stones. I can hear him weeping too.
Why does he weep? He promised me eternal life. Why does he weep, this God-man
when he said I will be with him in Paradise?
Can it be that Paradise is not enough to quench the thirst for human touch?
Can it be that this earth has become the desire of angels? That man himself has swallowed heaven and it is . . . no more?
I have not yet passed beyond the veil, even as the light called me to move on.
I have waited on my sisters' pleas to "stay until he comes." And now he comes, parched from the dust of his journey. He comes now, his sandals worn, his hair bleached by the sun and stands before the stones, his voice roaring like that day he commanded the waves to cease for Peter. Only once, he says it "Lazarus! . . . Come Forth!!"
and I feel his breath irradiate the stones that house me in. My whole being shakes with terror as my iced heart begins to warm and pump. . . My blood flows red again!
Oh . . . I hold my ears; you are no longer my friend, rousing me from my dark sleep, bringing me back to only die once more! Have you no pity? No mercy?
I rise . . . I am alive! I see my own hands move before my face in the dim light of this tomb. I rise . . . I walk again with shuffled feet out into the blinding sun. I reach for him and stumble. So many are there, crying with my sisters, but all I see is eyes . . . his eyes, and the hand that reaches out to me. Somehow he needs me, I know not why, but he still needs me.
The day would come and it did, when he, who raised me from the dead, would be nailed on a cross to die. And in his silent painful suffering, I would hear those words again. . . "Lazarus . . . Come Forth!" And I, the one he raised from death, would go to him with these hands that live again, and touch and hold his broken feet and look into his dying eyes and give to him my human touch. The Son of God . . . who rules the stars and all the heavens. . . no more to live in human flesh, no more to walk the earth or feel the wind blow through his hair. "Lazarus, Lazarus, one last touch before Paradise."

Joanne Cucinello 2007