No Soft Landing

No Soft Landing

(“Falling to his knees, he shouted, ‘Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!’ Then he died.” Acts 7:60)

There was no soft landing,
the turbulence spun the day with black rope and chains.
With dirt underneath his fingernails
he worked around the obstacles,
he waited for the stones to fall.
Their anger was a cyclone,
their noses flared like a flashflood,
their eyes red as blood,
their syllables sharp as swords.

He had not planned to lay down his life
outside the city walls. He had not
written the lyrics to incite their rage.
He was a bread sharer,
he was a server with sustenance to
lay upon the tables of the pardoned.

They forgot their history.
They thought they were the favorites divine;
they stooped to find the sharpest angles,
they stood to let the coarser stones fly.
They had been invited and turned it
down without an RSVP. They forgot
idolatry is not just a Roman song.
And the rocks landed, head and chest;
and the sneers sounded, catapulted.

He looked above their heads,
he heard beyond their years,
he breathed the prayer the Son
of Man
prayed and saw Him standing beyond
the crowd, once curious, now aroused.
He fell upon perforated knees and gasped
the breath of the Son
of God. And inhaled the dust of the day,
and pled their forgiveness with the last words
of the day.