Inheritance in the Floodplain

So then –
as through one trespass came the dull insistence,
the echo in the clay,
the quiet tilt of vertebrae toward ruin,
I watch
the world walk crooked,
Learning to limp well. 

I confess:
the garden is too far for my feet.
I cannot trust maps drawn in Eden.
Even Paul –
Damascus gospelgleam still clinging to his robe –
spoke in thunder-laced riddles.
One man brought the dirt in.
One brought the flood.

We float in the space between.

Sin,
a curse older than forbearance,
was not content with the kill –
it crowned itself king
and made men’s bones its throne.

But the gift unearned
lawless forbearance,
the gift unearned that stings 
like baptism in winter
Surged like it was owed –
It found the crack in the levy of logic
and bled through.

There are days I think the math is wrong.
That trespass multiplied faster
than obedience could catch.
Sometimes Adam’s echo seems louder
than Christ’s last exhale.

But then –

A glint.
Not gold,
but good.
Not of clean hands.
But pierced and writing to me.

I am left
with ink-smudged doctrines,
stammer flung,
a theologian – suspicious,
preaching resurrection
with a throat still dry from the loam.

If the gift unearned abounds
then I am the floodplain.
I do not rise –
I sink
and call it baptism

In the deep I wait
For great fishes hungry mouths,
nets,
harpoons.

But then it touches me –
a hand plunged
Into the watery grave,
and the blurry face
of my savior,
Walking on the waves,
bids me rise.