a little more

Easter morning: a child’s pink ball rolls beatifically down the street, trembling with thrilled indecision whenever it encounters a twig, a pebble, a leaf, an irregularity in the surface of the earth. Mysteriously, no child is in sight, no child’s cry of loss can be heard. There are no flowers here yet and we are somber people on our street so the ball is the only pink thing around, more pink on this weak-sunshined early spring day, perhaps, than it has ever been in its pink existence.

sap rising
three or four gumballs
in my pockets

I’ve forgotten to decorate my house for Easter, or maybe I just thought I didn’t deserve any pastel symbols of joy, I’m not sure. I haven’t forgotten, though, to think about Peter, who lied three times and thus broke his own heart. That’s the only part of the resurrection story that I’m sure must have really happened, and that’s the part that always seemed to me the most cruel. But the pink ball wobbles down my hilly street, I sit alone at my kitchen table watching it shine, and it occurs to me for the first time that Peter was forgiven.

every spring
a little more alone
wild violets

---

Prose: here, now
“sap rising”: DailyHaiku, July 10, 2011
“every spring”: Acorn 27