Three palm crosses in the laundry: An Easter poem

Kyrie:
My children play-make a cardboard car
in their bedroom while I clean.
The floor carries the debris of their
resurrection-opened chocolate shells and those aluminium grave clothes. Soon
the robovac will scan the timber boards
for any forgotten remains. Meanwhile I switch
wet and dry laundry while I spy
three discarded palms shaped in death
scattered on the tiles before a basket, like
Moses leaping from the reeds to certain
doom. Only, where’s the tomb? Already this year
so many tombs, so much death. So many
dreams somersaulting to the floor like kamikaze
Humpty-Dumpties, flinging hope to the worst
of false kings, the worst lies of horses and men.

Hope, however, reassembles
from the cracked ground up. On my phone
Bono sings Kyrie Eleison. Some things remain.
Faith, hope, the greatest of these.
I will gather these resurrected palms
and hold them in my stigmataed hands,
grip hypermobile feet to the timber floor,
held by your nails, held by your
scattered grave-stenched rags
and go on living. Go on.
Live.