​Christ Appears to Mary Magdalene: Juan de Flandes, by Philip C. Kolin

Christ Appears to Mary Magdeline, by Juan De Flandes (Spain, b. Flanders) 1500

​Christ Appears to Mary Magdalene: Juan de Flandes
 
No weeping Magdala this Resurrection
mourning.  Instead a noble Castilian la dama
kneeling here, her blood red cape flowing
around her. And standing there: her beloved,
 
whose touch she longs for with her open palm
entreating, as when she washed his feet,
or served him at table, or prepared his body
with oils and spices. Christ in his glorified body,
 
dressed as a gardener in a royal purple tunic,
his feet pierced from the nails. With his palm
he signals her.  Noli me tangere, Mary.
Don’t touch me. In this graveyard
 
crumbling arched stone recalls the futility
of that heavy stone that could not hold
her beloved in the tomb. Look how the green
and Eastering gold trees sing of His triumph.
 
Philip C. Kolin

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and African American playwrights and including 17 poetry collections. Most recent among them are Departures (Negative Capability Press), Delta Tears (Main Street Rag), Benedict's Daughter (Wipf and Stock), Reaching Forever (Poiema Series of Cascade Press), and Evangeliaries (Angelico Press). Ekphrastic poems run throughout his collections. He has also co-edited three collections of eco-poems on the Mississippi River, Hurricane Katrina, and about the moon.