Left Panel (closed)

Incandescence dressed
in human form: at rest
lightly on the stone
beside the open tomb
facing the dusty road.
Four wrens investigate
the stranger’s shining wings
and all creation waits
to hear the news he brings.

Right Panel (closed)

Burials and births
are always women’s work.
Three women walk the road
at sunrise, downcast eyes
swollen. In their hands,
the linens, spices, myrrh.
Joanna’s arm round Mary;
the other Mary lags
to dash away a tear.

Center Panel (opened)

The central panel is unpainted, stark.
Has history robbed us of magnificence,
bare wood the bones of beauty long decayed?
Or did the iconographer intend
a curtain drawn across the marriage bed
that wedded heaven to earth? Either way,
it speaks to us the words the angel said:
Why do you look for him among the dead?

‍

Victoria Gaile Laidler has a bachelor's degree in physics-astronomy from the University of Rochester, NY; her passions for liturgy and ecclesiology were conceived in its Interfaith Chapel, the home of the Newman Community there.  She is a project lead at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; volunteers at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Library in Columbia, MD; and occasionally blogs at gaudetetheology.wordpress.com.

More from the author