Nathan Bakken - call it resurrection

Poet Nathan Bakken breaths oxygen into an ember of warmth in a place of cold stone, darkness, and death with their poem “call it resurrection”. Nathan’s explanation of their poem reveal how a piece can transform from one meaning to another based on current events. Nathan told The Dewdrop, “‘call it resurrection’ originally served as a Christian meditation on the tomb, but it takes on a different tone in the wake of the suffering of the Palestinian people trapped in the rubble.” It would do the reader well to read “call it resurrection” twice, first with its original meaning in mind, and then again with the ongoing conflict in Gaza in mind.

call it resurrection

a cavern cold and wet waits for warmth.

sunlight
hangs on the cracks,
like illuminated spider webs,
as high noon soon
passes over.

a cold body twitches
and waits
for warmth.

tranquility arrives in the ———–“eventually”
of cards, breath, bread. Broken
promises
attempts to soothe the waves.
calls this action peace, when the body calls it longing.

the body does not know we will
return. does not know the wails are
real.

the fear and sadness of abandonment, of survival, are not something to be —diminished.

and so,

————-as with life,

the body quiets, moves from outcry to patient

waiting.

and I am left to wonder,

“How does the body yearn when outcry moves to silent tears?”

Nathan Bakken

Nathan Bakken (they/them) is a seminary-certified witch, religious educator, writer, and spiritual director who rests at the intersection of queerness, grief, religion, and poetry. Their poetry and writing has been published in Dinner Bell Magazine, Anchor Magazine, and the collection Held: Blessings for the Depths.