“Resurrection” first appeared in Poem.
Later, she would say there was no way to explain—
not that it mattered—what compelled her to do it.
After spending the better part of the day
playing quartets with friends, to head out alone
down an unexplored logging road, step with her
viola into a clear-cut and accompany there
a half dozen browsing elk. The piece she chose,
Borodin’s Nocturne, caused them only to look up
from their forage, then lower their heads again,
this music preferable to the raven croaks
they knew by heart. But what began
as intimation, the contours of an ill-defined urge,
took shape the longer she bowed to the bow,
a low moon rising fat between a bull’s antlers
the image that made it clear. Never mind
that his anxious snort drew the cows over a ridgeline,
their cotton hindquarters white flags of truce
that vanished like hope. Here among stumps
and slash she was performing, she understood
with each legato stroke, a sonata for hoof
and root. For that Lazarus chambered like a filbert
within its shell who slowly rose from her tomb
as if shocked back to unexpected life,
shroud ablaze at her feet.