but I couldn’t imagine  how hope,

before it gets to that bubbling place,

forces itself through miles of dirt packed hard,

then around, over, under  rocks,

willing itself not to dry up in the desert

or to merge with the sewer of a city street,

waiting for frozen prairie  to thaw,

resisting the warm and mindless absorption

of mud, moss, sand, swamp

until it finds the small trembling

where, welcome or not, it gathers the last of its strength

and breaks through  to the surface

the way a laboring woman, stinking,

exhausted,  summons one last grunt and push

to force the baby into the world

where it takes its first, sharp breath.

I bow my head to the hard work of hope,

let it place its dull and heavy hand upon my neck,

submit to its dour blessing,

begin its thankless, necessary pilgrimage.

Voices fade then roar.  Figures shifting

in and out of focus unbind his hands and feet.

Lazarus shoves them aside.

Last thing he knew, he’d lain down on his pallet

weak and parched. Then he was crawling

though a tunnel.  He couldn’t remember

why. Some mission he hadn’t volunteered for?

Now suddenly he’s been yanked back to find himself

in the bright sun and nearly naked.  Villagers

surround him––friends or foes?

Adrenaline thaws his tingling fingers.

There in the distance water, fields, familiar bridge.

So where exactly has he been?

Lazarus can’t form the sounds

to tell what his eyes have seen,

and no one wants to listen anyway.

The odor of decay wafting from his robes,

his tendency to startle, crouch, then throw a punch

each time the miller’s cart drives by,

keeps people at a distance.

Nights he wakes shouting,

face drenched in sweat,

fist clenched. Hush, his sister

whispers, you’re home safe now.

singing in my head as if I believed in the power

of positive thinking.  I’d try to replace it with anything else––

hymns, Gregorian chant––but Oh, what a beautiful day!

would sling itself back into my brain as if to remind me

just where I came from—household of musicals,

Nelson Eddy, Lawrence Welk and his bubble machine.

And what exactly is wrong with mindless optimism,

with being as corny as Kansas in August, as normal as blueberry pie?

When I came home from work that December evening,

my nineteen-year-old daughter, waiting at the kitchen table

with her father, took my arm and led me upstairs

because she had something to tell me. Once she started to cry I knew

what was coming. While the moon hit the sky like a big pizza pie

I just held her.  Now she looks like she swallowed that moon

she watched from my arms as we walked the Hatteras shore

because nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina.

Hot summer, she sits in one chair, swollen ankles propped up in another,

and asks, now that the baby can safely be born, if I know how

to make it come, while inside her womb, the baby’s feet drum

Time is on my side, yes it is.  After all that worrying,

I’ve got nothing better to offer than to lean down and sing

Happy Birthday into her belly, to touch her face

and warn her she’ll be driving six white horses when she comes.