Talking with the gardener

Is he real? and can I trust
the joy which sears across my soul 
with such delicious pain? 
The light is white, a curtain sparkling
so that I can barely look, can
hardly see the face I love.
Am I remembering? But the voice
which said my name – my given name –
it is the same, the cadences 
which bring my heart to song each time.
My tears still well, the picture flows
and changes as the light refracts
 – why do I weep? He asked me that
and yet I cannot bear to say
that what is joy for all the rest
is not enough without the touch
which now I know I cannot have.  
I would not have run, that night
of horror when the others fled –
not while he still breathed and stood
and spoke and suffered with that kiss
which I could never give.
So what is real? Is this enough
to share with joy and tell the world
that death can have no final word?
I cannot say. I need to hold,
to smile, to talk, to love, to be –
the shadow moves. The joy recedes
becomes more patient, calmer now
and I, alone among the trees,
must share my moment with the rest
and know it is no longer mine. 
But I was here. I loved. I lost.

C.M.M. 

I hadn't realised quite how many poems I've written over the years around the events of Holy Week and Easter - nor how many years ago I wrote this one! But revisiting them, I see how the idea of not paying enough attention grows, of events that become momentous after they've happened, of regret and loss and remorse. The photo is of Holy Trinity churchyard before the Eucharist this morning; the dazzling sun seems integral to the theme of the poem.