Easter Sunday
by Mindie Kniss
by Marian Kaplun Shapiro
at the Quaker Meeting House.
See us sitting. See the rows and rows
of dark wood benches. See the spring sun-
light prisming through the windows, linen
handkerchiefs fallen on the dark floor tiles.
Hear the expectant silence of apple trees,
buds about to pop, each in its pink or white time.
Now a baby papoosed on his daddy’s chest,
trills his tipsy giggle into the air.
Hmms, cackles, coos, gurgles, squawks,
squeals, he hatches sounds that have no spelling.
We grownups laugh our soprano/alto laugh,
our tenor laugh, our bass laugh, wrapping
the room in a kind of ‘stadium wave’ of love.
The father rises.
“This is Jonah,” he says. “Jonah wants to tell you
that he is very happy.” The father sits,
and
we
remember
what we’ve lost. That seemingly
impossible Faith. And, especially,
that unmitigated Joy,
born today
lost again today,
slipping through the sieves of consciousness,
new and old, inevitable, entwined,
as relentless as time, and as certain.
Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988), a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). As a Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often addresses the embedded topics of peace and violence, often by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she was named Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts in 2006 and again in 2008.
