Hot And Cold Running Good Friday Poem by Mike Finley

A cold warm day in April
or May and the bulbs
crouch like cowards
behind bolted doors,

occasional showers
and occasions of sin
dampen the sidewalks
and moisten the skin.

Water flows from me
as the torture twists
my grin to a grimace,
my hands into fists.

How many times was I
battered by road and looked
up and there was no veil
to catch my sweat.

Our father who art in heaven,
I love the Jew who died for me
though I know it is nonsense,
and April is a foolish, cruelish month.

And poems are cartwheeling
creatures, flyers, circulars,
winging their way beneath
my feet and the earth I roll away.

(1986)