Upon the hill

On Easter Sunday morning, very early, 10 of us went up Blackford Hill to see the sun rise.  Some of us did the same thing last year, some of us had never met each other.  We scrambled up past the Observatory to the peak - we could see far out to sea to where the sun waited behind Berwick Law.  It was cool, clear, hundreds of birds sang.  So we sang, too.  Lucia read words written about Jesus thousands of years before he arrived;  Brian and I read some words we’d written about him more recently.  In the coldness, looking out over the beautiful land dropping below us to the sea, I thought of the story of the women who were Jesus’ friends.  He was dead and buried; they got up very early to visit his grave and give him the proper rituals that had been missed in the chaos and grief of his death.  I thought of the people I’ve lost and that hopeless, chilly realisation that my world had changed, irrevocably.  This is what I imagined they’d found at the grave:

In the dim they met him on the hill
A man with clothes like lightening
Why do you look for the living among the dead?

A bitter gasp caught in their throats
A step inside the tomb, a wild last call
Unravelling, death running backwards

The light. The sky. The one they love.

Everything changed for them, there.  Imagine the wonder of finding someone alive you thought you’d lost.

Sarah Stocks