No Longer Hidden

Sitting alone one October morning, this is what i saw.

Such a peaceful park.
Grass carefully mowed.
Trees carefully pruned.
So green, so alive.
Hidden in the grass
flat rectangular slabs
color of dead concrete
artfully hide death.

Death and decay
hidden from view.
Frail father so helpless.
In pain from broken bones.
Paper thin skin easily torn.
Will he see next year?
We try to pretend
death's not real.

Son in severe pain.
Depression oppresses.
He threatens suicide.
We wrestle with death.
Death so final.
Decay the result.
Hope seems distant.
Hidden from view.

The end?

I see death
no longer hidden.
So close.
So real.
Yet death hides
a secret within.
Unwed girl, heavy & hot
a child hides within.

Ballooning body
no longer hidden.
Gossips whisper.
Men pick up stones.
A simple babe born
hidden in Egypt.
Sent here to earth
to suffer and die.

Nails driven so deep.
Death no longer hidden.
His body broken.
Death truly real.
Yet hid in his death
is life everlasting.
No longer hidden.
He promises life.
© Presbypoet, October 21 & 27, 2005

As I sat in a cemetery to pray, I saw we pretend death isn't real. We hide it, as though we could hide from it. This place of death, tried to hide death. Yet for me, death is so real. I can't pretend. I know death's face. It stalks my father, and my son.

But after describing death's reality, I realized death wasn't the end. There was hope hidden within. Jesus had come to die for me, so hidden within death was hope. Real death, and real hope. So it comes full circle; from life, to death, to life. The secret no longer hidden.