The Volcano Series
    And the graves were opened; and many bodies . . .
    which slept arose, And came out of the graves after
    his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
    appeared unto many. Matthew 27:52-53
        When asked, “Just what is night anyway?”
    Coyote closed his eyes,
    Placed his burden basket over his head
    And began making the sounds of hoot owl.
        “The Burden Basket,” Elderberry Flute
            Song, Peter Blue Cloud
What do you think of the little rumblings, the discontents, the
warpings of fault lines and fissures? What seems to be said takes
some thinking. He led captivity captive.¹ Now that he
ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower
part of the earth.² What could it have been to descend into the
earth: the magma and lava the dark heat nearly sweat lodged there?
Was it where he wandered with his ash bucket, his firepans and
shovel after Calvary, after the graves were opened? What did the
dead do the three days he was in hell preaching on last chance to
the unchanced? Did they look at one another and didn’t quite
know what to do? Maybe some saw their families on the street and
weren’t recognized. How had they changed that they didn’t know
them? It would have been too much anyway for the families to
know their dead were only waiting on Jesus and had three days to
kill and would have to leave again for a second parting while the
families were still grieving from the first. Still others hid out,
pulling their tunics and cloaks and head cloths about them, holding
their little angers, the mistreatments, the rapes, the robberies, and
waited on the edge of town for him to return from hell and take
them in the air.
¹Psalm 68:18
²Ephesians 4:9
