His body breaks
long before he
hangs on the cross.
He feels it in
the slow drag
of sickness
picked up
from crowds,
in the joints
worn thin
from long
walks, the
strain of
forty-day
fasts.
He is held
together with
God and glue
by Golgotha.
Eloi eloi,
he allows
himself at last,
lama
sabachthani?
This poem won honorable mention in the 2020 Clinton F. Larson Poetry Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies.
