Good Friday (poem)

More sins were pinioned on each driven nail [i]

than angels stilled their dance upon its head

poised upon the brink of love and hell,

held back from saving Him and damning me.[ii]

His treasured tears in unstopped bottle kept [iii]

as crimson drops drawn forth by scourge and spike –

units of heaven’s woe-weighed currency –

conspired to form an unforced flood of grace.

Is this the crux of what You meant by ‘good’?

Spoken in Eden [iv] – now enfleshed in curse [v]

where justice and mercy, divorced by sin,

met in a lover’s kiss marked with a cross.[vi]

[i] Colossians 2:14

[ii] Matthew 26:53

[iii] Psalm 56:8

[iv] Genesis 1:31

[v] Galatians 3:13

[vi] Psalm 85:10