Easter 2020
This is the day our forsythia will open,
the day our neighbors will leaf-blow their yard,
the day, they say, Christ rolled back the stone
and the last Sunday before the first anniversary
of my mother’s death. This is the day
of the goddess Eostre, a day of springtime
we have been given to rise once more
and help each other live, grass greening.
Today is a day many will die
to be recorded as x, y, z in the ledger
of those taken by the plague
and when they run out of alphabet
they’ll just start over, like hurricanes.
This day Christians proclaim joy
at victory over death –
but he still had to go through it.
This is the day a year ago we sat and held
my mother’s hand –
I don’t know what to do, she said.
We stared out at the daffodils together,
knowing nothing of how to finish dying.
Easter 2020 by Lisken Van Pelt Dus | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
Lisken Van Pelt Dus is the author of two full-length collections of poems, How Many Hands to Home (Mayapple Press 2025) and What We’re Made Of (Cherry Grove 2016), as well as two chapbooks, Everywhere at Once and Letters to My Dead. She was raised in England, the US, and Mexico, and now lives with her husband in western Massachusetts, where she is an award-winning teacher of writing, languages, and martial arts. Her work can be found in many journals, anthologies, and craft books, and has earned several awards and Pushcart Prize nominations.
