
April 3, 2026
This Good Friday as I walk a labyrinth while wrens and phoebes twitter from the still-barren oaks and hickories, I find myself surrounded in thought by all of those being crucified this very day:
• Those being held in detention centers across the country, not knowing what the next moment will bring;
• Those who have been deported to unfamiliar countries where no family, no kin, no hope exists;
• Those innocent children in the custody of uncaring strangers and separated from their parents, eating food with worms;
• Those afraid to leave their homes because of the color of their skin, their accent;
• Those who are dying, alone and forgotten, this very day;
• Those who are confused and lost because they’ve forgotten who they are, who we are, and those who have been forgotten by the one they love most;
• Those boys and girls ensnared in sex trafficking with no escape, nothing to face each day but dread;
• Those caught in prideful, aggressive, and unnecessary wars who are now homeless, jobless, hopeless;
• Those in prisons who never hear a friendly word;
• Those ensnared in addictions from which they cannot escape;
• Those who live with the abiding ache of grief;
• Those who are friendless and who face this broken world alone every day;
• This wounded and groaning planet that still, somehow, manages to birth a dogwood blossom . . .
It isn’t surprising, then, that Hayden Carruth’s poem comes to mind this particular Good Friday of 2026 as I take a step and then pause under the empty trees, seeing all those being crucified to whom we each are connected. Today is a day for such recognition.
Crucifixion
You understand the colors on the hillside have faded,
we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn,
the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves, the mist
of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon
and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing
up into the orchard for a long time, as I do now,
thinking of how I died last winter and was revived.
And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed
to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him, “Are you
the Christ?” And he must have heard me, for in his
agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively,
up and down, once and twice. And a little way off,
I saw another cross with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then another and another,
ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted
legions upward among the misty trees, each cross
with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked
figure nailed to it, and some of them were women.
The hill was filled with crucifixion. Should I not be
telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something
about death now. I know how silent it is, silent, even
when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight
is very silent and very dark. When I looked I saw
nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images
on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him.
from American Poetry Review
