Good Neighbors: 8. Eight Days, Nine Yards, at the Eleventh Hour

Standing before the empty tomb,
we see its emptiness and weep.

What happened here?
Who can say?

Loss and abandonment hang in the air.

A parent died;
a friend left;
a mentor migrated,
leaving no forwarding address;
the plane crashed,
and we cannot rest until we know why,
for how can there be closure
under the cloud of the unknown?

We all wait,
and what we await
is an eighth day,
when the emptiness can be lifted
—or filled—
by possibility,
so we can move on.

When will our eighth day come?

If we could move,
we might
attempt a full nine yards
to achieve ten,
or, who knows, even more.

The empty tomb
is meant to make us turn to one another,
for solace and for support,
to reconnect and renew.

On that day,

on the day when we break through
—the grief,
            the pain or paralysis—
when we find one another
and work together
—to be with and for one another—
                        only when,
at that eleventh hour of our collective soul
                        only then
            might we truly be known

            as Good Neighbors.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is the final prayer and postlude of a cycle based on the so-called Seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is “Psalms from the Streets”.