Emptiness echoes everywhere.
I walk hospital halls
Empty of visitors,
Passing rooms
Empty of patients
Who have delayed their operations
Till better days.
I pass by parks
With yellow taped play structures
Empty of children,
Empty of laughter.
I drive past schools
Empty of students,
Empty of teachers,
Educating us on the effects
Of pandemic.
I glance through restaurant windows
Empty of customers,
Empty of the tinkling sounds of forks on plates,
Empty of conversation.
I stroll through the grocery store,
Masked and sanitized,
Dodging those bold enough to venture through aisles
Empty of cleaning supplies,
Empty of toilet paper,
Empty of oat milk.
Emptiness echoes everywhere.
Between the outstretched wings of golden angels,
Emptiness sat.
The ark of the covenant,
Where God sat
Enthroned between the cherubim,
Was defined by that empty space.
Two angels
With emptiness in between.
A kingly, holy emptiness
Filled with divinity.
Likewise in burial garden,
Two angels with emptiness in between.
Empty tomb.
Dead Jesus is gone.
And somehow,
Empty as the world may seem,
Every vacant street,
Every vacant heart
Just might be filled with
The life of the God
Who emptied himself
That we might be filled with him.