Easter Bouquet 2025: Holy Saturday, by Sally Thomas

 Author of two poetry collections—Motherland, which appeared from Able Muse Press in 2020, and the forthcoming Among the Living—Sally Thomas is co-writer for the Substack newsletter Poems Ancient and Modern, which features a classic poem with a short introductory essay every weekday. Her novel Works of Mercy was published by Wiseblood Books in 2022, as was Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology. Wiseblood published her short-story collection The Blackbird in 2024. 

Holy Saturday

As dawn steps in, the grief-upended world

Resettles on its pinnings. Now the stone

Crowbarred across the door wears the mundane

Bejeweled shine of new dewfall. The one

Who lies in darkness, emptied, stilled, and cold,

Has cradled in himself his newborn death.

He has come through his labor. Yesterday

Has ended, drowned in night. Friends, gone away,

Are mourning him. Unsweetened by decay,

The new tomb bathes him in its earthy breath.

Now comes the day of waiting and of rest.

The shadows shrink, advance across the lawn.

Pale early lilies pinned upon its breast,

Time presses always toward another dawn.

*

Time presses always toward another dawn

With early lilies pinned upon its breast.

The shadows shrink, advance across the lawn.

Now comes the day of waiting and of rest.

The new tomb bathes him in its earthy breath,

Unsweetened by decay. Left now to sleep,

The dead man is recovering from his death,

Its hard delivery and birth, the slip

Of soul from body. Now, nearby, the old

Midnight midwife shakes out her wings, prepares

Her exit. Meanwhile, elsewhere, unconsoled,

His friends sit round their barren table. Upstairs.

The shutters drawn. No bread. No wine. No speaking.

Another ordinary day is breaking.