NaPoWriMo#2: Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs
by Justine C. Tajonera

We hid eighty-four eggs in the park, yesterday
and waited an hour and a half for everyone to show up.
Eighty-three eggs were found in thirty minutes, one was unaccounted for.
Inside the eggs were pieces of paper with Easter quotes
about eternal life and temples and resurrection and God's
only begotten son. I had hoped some of the children would
read them before turning them over for the prizes of marshmallows
and star jelly candies and chocolates and lollipops.
Some of them did. But what I remember most was how hot
the afternoon light was. How cooling the breeze.
How peaceful it was with only the two of us looking for
unlikely places for children to find treats among the trees.
We rested on the wooden bench together, exhausted, smiling.
We counted all those eggs. We worked on them with our son,
our daughter. We had twelve big eggs with five small candies
in them. We had twelve small, fancy eggs with designs on them and
sixty regular eggs, each with three small candies in them. Sixty
out of the eight-four eggs had carefully folded pieces of paper.
Easter bunnies have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, I know,
but there was something in the work of that afternoon that was
the resurrection and the life.

Eve

by Justine C. Tajonera

Paradise was blissful
ignorance once
but for you.
Everyone thinks
to curse you and
not thank you
for opening your
eyes,
for creating
the first, the very first
problem,
for stirring
discontent.
What is the dream
if not for the long
stretch
between what is
and what
could be?
What creates greatness
but this chasm
of adversity?
I look at you
across time,
starting the first
fire,
startled by your discovery
of inadequacy.
I could be
looking
into
a mirror.


March 14, 2011

Image from: tablespace.net