Good Friday-- and a poem of mine to mark the day

I've always been interested in the lives of the people living on the margins of paradigm-shifting events. Here's a poem of mine, first published by Sojourn, a journal at UT-Dallas. It was the one of my very first poems that were accepted for publication. 

That Friday

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. --Matthew 27: 51-52

 

And when the sky split, and rocks

spewed forth with the dead, did the woman

hauling water from the well push back her hair

and wonder? Or did she continue her work,

 

not quite sure what the omens told,

knowing only that there was dinner to get,

children to bathe, and a husband who was late

getting home from an execution across town.