The Dead Lie

The Dead lie, upside down in the earth’s gut, bodies shredded in sharp crags and rotting in pocked holes of rocks ancient with the terrors of time.

The Living dance, twirling on the dewy fields of cushioned green, faces washed in stars aged by the tumbling of time.

The spritely souls that tread on the spinning surface can’t see, can’t feel, can’t touch the fathomless decay that turns and turns and churns the loam soundlessly, steadily, endlessly…

Do the dead hear the echo of the calloused heel crunching a pinecone?

Do the living lament the legions lying under their pulsing bodies?

All the world is a graveyard, all the soil is a blanket. Gently it covers the broken voices of the past. Snowdrops hang their flowering faces and weep, reaching roots deep to entwine hands with the dead.

Yet…

What lies with the dead is an unseen spark; ember-red earth mingled with ruby-red flame. A song gathers in the bowels of the earth, note by note – ringing, soaring, roaring in its caverns, rattling long-awaiting gemstones loose.

And then…

Then:

Their souls crowned with sapphire, eyes alight with emerald, the dead will rise, rise from the underside of the earth. Dusty fragments of bones will seep like mist from the soil, gathering under the heavens to re-form. The snowdrops will raise their heads and see a stripe of glory shooting across the sky. The stars will glow and the earth’s belly will heal:

The tremor of time will come.

And the living will look on and wonder…

But now, now under the fragrant jasmine and velvet twilight, can the living dance for the dead? Can they delight in what once was, mourn what is now, and watch for what will come?

Yes dance, dance all you that breathe and live and move.

But do not forget that resurrection surges beneath your feet.

This piece was originally published on Christina Brown’s website and published with Cultivating by request.

http://www.livebeautiful.today/livebeautiful/2020/3/4/the-dead-lie

The featured image is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and is used here with her gracious permission for Cultivating and The Cultivating Project. 

Christina Brown

A founding member of The Cultivating Project, Christina has been fascinated by beauty her whole life. Color, texture, pattern, fragrance, melody, light – all of the boundless ways in which creation shines – ignites her imagination, compelling her to create. Even as a wee sprite, Christina was dedicated to wordsmithing and sketching her way through its marvels in an attempt to capture, at least partially, the imprint of the Creator within it. But writing and drawing are not her only creative endeavors; several years ago she took on the laborious (but rewarding) task of nurturing a garden in the dismal soils of the Rocky Mountain foothills, and has eagerly employed her spade (alongside her pen) as a tool to cultivate and curate the beauty around her. 

She has two little gardeners-in-training who embody all these marvels and more in their merry little faces. She and her husband Brian are the founders of the Anselm Society based in Colorado Springs, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian Imagination. She serves as the Director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild and her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.