Good Friday

Good Friday

Later, long beyond those old stones rolling,

            she’ll rub the thumb where the blister

            has become a kiss, or lips

            that kiss her estranged face

            her frenzied then shuddering

            then empty gaze.

This splinter sunk in after she’d scrubbed

            the cross, after she raised her hands

            beneath the sky of his clavicle

            touched his bloody gums and beard,

            it buried itself like his first word, immah,

            the twin bladed sword Simeon said

would pierce her heart.  Any other smothered

            piece of wood she’d bite out

            and bind before she scooped the goats,

            their milk curds for her day’s cheese.  Not this.

            This thin sliver in her sealed

            over skin weeps clean

every day.  Every day it is salt and honey

            if she is lucky.  Every day by sun-

            set it is empty as a Maccabee urn

            that by some trickery or need

            swells again in the night and almost

            becomes, but not quite, light.