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A newspaper photo in a local weekly
paper taken at my job as head custodian of Briargate School in Cary,
Illinois when my collection We Build Temples in the Heart was published in 2004.
Note—Tomorrow, March 20, is the official first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, but it is close enough to revisit this.
It was a bitter and blustery day in McHenry County almost 25 years ago when I was walking to the train station to get to work in the next town the line early one cold equinox morning and I was struck with this which was included in my 2004 Skinner House collection We Build Temples in the Heart.
Resurrection
From that frigid morning
when the fog of humanity
hangs palpable before our faces
and that fat red sun
pops before our eyes at the
far end of the reaching blacktop,
then, when from the highest, barest twig the cardinal sings
his whistle in the graveyard,
our hearts know resurrection and murmur—
Yes, Yes.
We are a cold people in a cold land,
and every creeping inch of yellow willow hair,
every footprint in newly giving earth,
every ratchet tap of woodpecker on lifeless wood
resonates with resurrection and nods recollection.
It is no wonder that in hot lands,
perpetual in green,
moist and ever fertile,
the natives snickered at tales of a hanging god,
turned on naked heels,
and ran to sensible deities who would not
abandon them only to hound them on return
with foolish promises.
But here, at turning time,
our arctic hearts surrender
to the sureness of the resurrection that surrounds us,
and in the echo of this miracle
understand redemption too,
in the merciful thaw
of our glacial souls.
—Patrick Murfin
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