Poetry Friday: A Better Resurrection (Christina Rossetti)

April has brought both poetry month and Easter this year. I've been grateful for this coinciding, as poetry month tends to push me to reading and writing more poetry.  When my heart is moving out of the Lenten season and into the celebration of Easter, especially when the world is waking up into spring, there is a lot to ponder.

This year, there is more than ever to ponder as I am in the midst of my continued battle against cancer. I was there this time last year too, but far too exhausted and in shock (I had just finished my initial intensive chemo treatments) to do much thinking or writing. Exhaustion has become just part of the new normal landscape, but thankfully shock does wear off, and you find ways to move forward as boldly and creatively as you can. You find life in the midst of illness, beauty in the midst of brokenness, hope in the midst of worry, prayer in the midst of pain.

I could go on, but Christina Rossetti shares it all so much more profoundly in her poem "A Better Resurrection" which I've pasted below.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Tabatha Yeatts' blog The Opposite of Indifference.

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Rossetti