Resurrection Now

 (Resurrection is for the living, not the dead.)
 
Winged guests circle
    And proclaim
That dinner is prepared
    The table set:

A fine meal of meat – on - the - hoof,
A scavenger’s politically correct green feast,
Addressing the imbalance
Of corruptible flesh untended.

Six turkey vultures,
then seven, then eight,
Stand in a newly mowed field
Beside the road:

They gather around the body
of a fallen deer.

Hit on the road
She had run a few steps
So that death at least took place
On fallow ground.

Now even the worms will get their chance,
Nothing left as trash.
It is all so right, so perfect,
So ecologically correct, So…Death-ly.

The living eat the dead,
the worms wait.
Everything is as always,
Entropy is on the march.

The primal order has the chair,
The birds of death flock to the table,
Things that crawl in the muck awake to eat -
The same ol’ same ol’.

It is death, and the meal is death,
And everything reeks of decay.

Selah

As for my fall and end,
I take no comfort in being tidy,
No interest in the possibilities
Of new life in the exchange of molecules.

If in this life I am not raised
from the dead,
Why should I expect more
after the worms are finished?

I want resurrection now,
Or else the dream is only that.
 
Damn those who will gather
To feast when I die,
Muttering “life changed, not ended,”
And, “pass the peas and ham.”

Let those who feast my requiem rejoice
And find their resurrection realized,

For which the death of the deer,
and the Lord Jesus,
    and maybe even me,
Is a sign and a promise
Because we are raised
    -present tense.

The dead should teach us life.
And blessed will we be
If we awake and know 
That light and life are in us.

Selah.

The hart desires the water brook,
And my soul seeks You o God.

There will be another feast
With finer guests,
With new grass and fresh water.
And we will eat a better meal,

Not of old flesh but new dreams.
The meadow will be a place
    of many mansions,

The deer and the birds and the worms
Will feast together in the light,
    and we will be raised.

Selah