Half-light

Waking to winter’s dawn
the room drained of color,
except for neon numbers—
6:14—blinking on the bruise
of the bureau against a pale
wall while out the window,
seen through glass darkly,
a world shrouded, everything,
all of it, wrapped in gauze:
like Lazarus, I think, when
Jesus, weeping, called him forth,
and he woke from death, blinded,
his body bound by strips of cloth
that, like a chrysalis dissolving,
fall away as he rises, trembling,
to stumble through the darkness,
confused, and stunned, perhaps
afraid, not knowing where he’d
been or what comes next until
emerging into sudden sun, he sees
Jesus, face to face, and, dazzled,
celebrates, as I do each new day,
the miracle of light’s return.