A brief Easter translation-(ish) poem on Ezekiel 37, modified for the for the “reticent, the recalcitrant, the bitter, those staunchly anti-Higher Power,” as requested by my friend Diane:

The hand of the holy is on me, and She carries me through the sky and sets me in the middle of a valley; it is full of bones. She leads me back and forth among them, and I see a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that are very dry — that are brittle with age, and with disappointed longing, with rage, and with despair.

She asks me, “My beloved child, can these bones live?”

I say, “Only you know.”

Then She says to me: Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the words of love — which says: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you and you will come to life.

And this will hurt, but you will learn to open again, and open your arms to the sky, and open your trembled hands, and let wild birds feed you and find water in this desert.

You will remember what it is to hold the air, sweet after rain, that catch of breath between the startled inhale and saying yes with all the wonder in your veins.’

-Leslie Leasure