Mirror [a poem of maybes, for Easter]

Gamaliel Espinoza Macedo / flickr

Maybe the cross is a mirror
and in it we see
our thirst for blood,
for revenge,
our need for a scapegoat
and our desire for someone to blame.

Maybe we see ourselves
when we hold up this
instrument of torture and gore
that some inexplicably
see beauty in,

maybe the beauty of it
is not in
sacrifice
or atonement
or innocent payment
for our grievances,

maybe the beauty is in
God speaking our language —
our ugly, rudimentary, clapper-claw —
knowing that we would not be satisfied
with eloquence,
with anything less than brutal death.

Maybe the beauty is in
a God who would speak
in the only way we could understand
–the language of death and blood and punitive justice–
so that one day God could reach us

and begin to teach us
a new way to speak.