I was flicking through the April edition of Third Way magazine yesterday in the library and was struck by Michael Symmons Robert’s poem Jairus. We are left to our own devices to imagine what Jairus and his family felt after their daughter is brought back to life by Jesus but this poem captures some of how it might have been.

Jairus
by Michael Symmons Roberts

So, God takes your child by the hand
and pulls her from her deathbed.
He says: “Feed her, she is ravenous.”

You give her fruits with thick hides
– pomegranate, cantaloupe –
food with weight, to keep her here.

You can read the rest of the poem here at: Ploughshares: Jairus.

I was so struck by the poem that I did a search of the net to see if there were others out there by Roberts. Sure enough there were.

• Flesh
• Food for Risen Bodies: Two poems (The first is my favourite)

I like the incarnational, fleshly imagery.

I see there he written several books of poems. so I’ll be checking the libraries to see if they have any.