Where Equator and Prime Meridian cross
is the one True Cross, the rood’s wood warped and tacked
pole to pole. Constantine’s mother wrapped in sackcloth
a splinter of it, Jerusalem souvenir. His fingertips
tickle where they meet in the skies over Fiji.
A nail pegs foot, foot, and Ross ice shelf, while the North Sea
baptizes him each time his head lolls. He is convex, racked.
Now the sun hoses him with bleach light, eyes stinging, enough
to make him cough. Now he’s spun to face a darkness his
pupils dilate around but can’t swallow, not whole. He is
abandoned and loved like clockwork. Meanwhile his dawn-
scouring, dusk-purging blood drizzles to the sea floor,
past leviathan, past shark in a steady drizzle, down
till it spills in the mid-Atlantic’s half-scabbed rifts, gashes, its infected
tectonic wounds, fund of land. There, in the heat and smithy,
his blood dyes red the sulfur-loving bacteria
that ask no light, no oxygen, no water of him, that thrive
and sing hosannah with their mouths around the exhaust.
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
