James Walks Home from Nain

—Luke 7:11–17

A pleasant place, he thinks as they descend the 
steep hill where sparrows dance, making their way 
among the tombs that line their narrow path. He 
imagines the lives and dreams of the inhabitants 
of these stone rooms. The way their voices have 
flown like leaves, the way they abide like trees.

Song-bright peak of Mt. Hermon white in the distance 
like some memory of laughter and the green plains 
an ocean all around and the children of the city playing 
their invisible flutes, mourning their invisible lost, 
dancing an imaginary grief and humming their mirth,
he marvels that anyone could ever believe in death.

He looks for the light in the footprints of his master,
perceives a glow where the worn sandals touched dirt.
The way Jesus opens himself to the world, the way
he smiles with his arms, embraces all faces of the sky.
The bees around him echo the buzz of exuberance
filling his soul, sensing a hidden sweetness everywhere.

Looking at a blue so vast so eternal so real, he wonders 
why some clouds are flat along the bottom, imagines them 
sitting atop some invisible eternal table where God dines
on songs and hope, surrounded by the joyful transformed. 
Then he thinks of that poor widow and her son sitting down
to their supper together tonight, wondering what to say.

What will soup taste like on a tongue returned from the
darkest night? How will his laughter fill all the empty
spaces in his mother’s heart, dancing the light in her
eyes, singing its weight and spiraling toward fullness?
The son closes his eyes to offer a blessing over their meal
but she cannot take hers off his ordinary, miraculous face.

—Robbie Taggart