Ghosts rise from the sodden earth, and the air is weighted with mist. It is Easter, it is a spring rain, it is a comma splice in the sentence of the year.

There are no children in this house anymore . . . no eggs or bunnies or jellybeans for breakfast. And I was never much of a churchgoer. Still, I am shaken, always, by spring. Life transparent over death. The wrench of return. The shock of color, of scent. The pagan roil of breath and bone, stalk and leaf.

I want to say more, but spring is a stark season. Sentiment is a luxury; she will not stomach such babbling. She requires her pound of flesh. The dead lamb in the straw, streaked with its mother's blood. The deserted egg rotting in the nest. The season demands its silences.

Spring is a Greek play, vivid and inexorable. The sap rises in our limbs. In frenzy, we murder our sons.

Easter is the church's gilding. Now the proscenium glows, and the scrim blurs. It is easy to forget the gods. But there they are. And they shrug.