Before reading this poem, read ‘Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird’. I created this ‘thirteen ways’ poem as a reflection of the blackbird one.
I
This lonely and bald hill,
All forest removed,
But one tree returning.
II
Witness an afflicted body
Laid across
Death’s threshold on a cross.
III
That unshapely tree caught the fading of light
Long shadows rested on tufts of green.
IV
The one who crafted cosmos
Torn.
On carpenter’s craft: his body
Torn.
V
A cross is many things to many people,
An alluring promise on sea-salt-stained parchment
Or the promise of death defeated,
Fickle glimmering gain
Or gain everlasting.
VI
Thunderclouds bellow rolling fury,
Cast saturating needles.
Down the splintering spine
Blood, sweat and water mingle.
Every darkness
Piled upon misery
An asphyxiated sentence.
VII
Why with such lavish adornment,
Do we dress its simple beams?
O the worth of that cross
Which presses against the heart
Of your flesh.
VIII
I see lengths of timber
Make inspection of crude nails
Known empirically, yet
As through a mirror dimly lit
And yet I’m known.
IX
When the cross was finished in a workshop,
Its true odyssey
Had only just begun.
X
Arrested by the silence
Presenting Golgotha’s charge,
Every tongue shall confess
Oh, what we’ve done.
XI
Foot over foot, in rebellion
He ran.
From clutching thirty betrayers,
To clutching self-fashioned noose
Two men hanged
From trees.
XII
Says the gardener, listen.
Cross and grave are defeated.
XIII
New grapes rest at winepress.
Old wineskins shrivelled
And bereft of wine.
On the arms of the cross
A new covenant poured out.
Distilled Orthopraxy 