Salvation Sestina 2

Salvation Sestina 2, original poetry by Heidi Kortman
Infinite exploration began for two in a world full of room.
All things theirs, to name, to tame, to taste, but for fruit from one tree.
Disobedience fractured that future without disturbing one plan concerning the Carpenter,
who stepped through the widely opened door.
Cultivated shrubbery left the guilty pair exposed—nailed—
soon to know-how on their act, all misery is hinged.
Blockading sword’s incessant swish, an angel’s mighty arm the hinge,
denies return to Eden’s garden room.
Outside they’ll scrabble, fleshly dust with dirtied nails.
Inside, safe, the life-eternal tree.
Prophecy provides an incarnate door,
who is the Carpenter.
Broad table supports a banquet’s weight of food and symbol, places prepared for the Carpenter’s
friends and enemy. Plans and intent hinge
together as a door.
Confusion and comfort not comprehended crowd the upper room…evil betrayal ripening to its windfall harvest from the plundered knowledge tree.
A hammer waits beside piled nails.
Thirty crusted coins, blood-rusty, clink cold. Burst through the pouch flung beyond ragged nails:
rejected payment for one carpenter.
Wind swings guilt on a rope, a burden too much for one rotted tree
branch cracks and drops, unhinged.
A potter’s field hastily purchased, offers unrepentant death scant room
while priests rationalize their act behind locked doors.
In the windswept courtyard, Peter eyes a door
and bites his nails.
What’s happening in that room?
Judgment passed on the carpenter,
Responsibility evaded, his death march starts. Signaled by squeaking hinges
as scuttling scribes skulk toward the foot of one last tree.
Outside of town, unshaded by any tree,
he still sweats blood who named himself the Door.
The unchanging plan hinges
upon suspending nails
driven through wrists and his heels, the Serpent’s last, iron bite of the carpenter.
From“No room in the inn,” to his death between heaven and earth, no room.
Arms spanning two-branched mockery tree, he hangs transfixed on nails.
Eternally opened door, Son of God, Christ Carpenter.
His obedience my salvation’s hinge, access to my heavenly room.