Early April Easter - Poem

National Catholic Reporter, August 13, 1999 by Helen Fitzgerald

   We are saved, we just don't feel it yet.
   Anxiously we study lawn and garden
   rejoicing in the sparse occasional blooms
   while dead leaves linger to be raked.
   The mighty oaks condescend not
   to early leaf, unbending in their patience.
   But forsythias of blinding gold
   bend and beckon their hosannas,
   generous, profligate their blessed sprays.
   Wait no longer, proclaim it now!
   The earth awakens, the empty tomb
   makes believers, of us all.

--Helen Fitzgerald East Hampton, N.Y.3