Every other religion
asks you to climb.

Christianity announces
that God climbed down.

“It is finished.”

And then — he kept going,
down past the last rung
the world had built.

They wrapped him in linen
and thought that was
the end of the sentence.

It was a comma.

Down through the floor of the grave.
Down under the foundations of the sea.
Down to the country
with no maps.

Here the forgotten are kept.
Adam. Eve. Every name
the living stopped saying.

They had waited so long
they had stopped waiting.

He crossed the whole floor of death
to where the first man slept —
and he did not take him
by the hand.

A hand can slip.

He took him by the wrist—
the grip of a rescuer
who will not be shaken loose.

He did not go down to look.
He went down to bring them up.

And the long climb back
was crowded — he came up
holding everyone.

There is no pit so deep
that he is not deeper still.