Good Friday

The day is benign,
there is haze and
fine rain,
the sky has a brooding look
clouds gather slowly
building for a storm
and every now and then
a crimson sun
clears the grey
to gleam sharp-edged and red, briefly
pierces the still air
hanging suspenseful -
a God's-eye-view
of our drab, defiling
world here below.
Thunder
would not suffice,
nor anger,
nor lightning severing
the sky with your white saw
for you,
quiet one,
are gone and lost to us
your blood
stained the rood
left us with
regret and tears your
resource seasoned us to bear
our worst, and hope.
In this day's
atrocity,
both here and far,
we cannot call them
good, almost
two thousand years of Fridays
we have known and lived
since your sweet wood
told us:
turn aside and
turn to God not idolise
yourselves, your hands, and play
at living life.
This sacred gift
you sacrificed
was love and the world's light.
You did not come to judge us
but to save.





	In this the last Good Friday
of our twentieth century
where the wood is green no longer
and we have no wisdom here,
how will our world be
when it is fully dry,
when we are crying hopelessly
for all we did
and all we did not do
to save it, our common life
no less than you?
The sins we commit are 
still being counted 
yet
the sun is burning scarlet 
you have set your fire 
and all the massing 
darkness of this earth 
cannot douse it.

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