‘Once’: A Poem for Good Friday, by Jeffrey Essmann

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Once

Once he was finally dead; once just a piece
Of meat nailed to the planks of scabrous wood;
Once suffering had done all that it could
To him before it ceded him release;
And once it seemed that evil no surcease
Or reasonable limit understood
And thereby the nobility and good
Of human motive rendered mere caprice;
Then earth, depleted, lost, benumbed with grief
Did with a ravaged tenderness enfold
The shattered flesh within her cold embrace
And sealed it with a stone of unbelief.
But there was something here no tomb could hold:
A life that death and unbelief displaced.

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Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.