In a pickle

Fiddlehead of a fern. [SOOC, cropped close and square.]
Inspiration: freespiral's fern

Chantler63 Shakespeare Challenge and National Poetry Writing Month
Well-known phrases from Shakespeare
Day 18: ‘in a pickle’ (The Tempest)

I'm definitely in a pickle.
Just edited 50 pages of my novel (1/3 of Part II-b), and now I only have 15 minutes to post a blip, provide a poem, and get to the Good Friday service.
Solution: Cheat.

So since this is a day when it's traditional to walk the Stations of the Cross, here is a 2004 sonnet I wrote to accompany a series of watercolors I did years ago, one for each station. The poem crams fourteen stations into fourteen lines. I made the paintings into a booklet that a nun friend of mine used as her meditation when she couldn't get to church.

Tosca Maria, may light perpetual shine upon you.


Here's the poem. The dots are not part of it. They're there to make up for Blip's annoying habit of squeezing the 'extra' (but important and carefully inserted!) spaces.


GOOD FRIDAY


I. . . . . . . They stare at me with arrow eyes and point,
II. . . . . . then on my shoulders place the killing tree.
III. . . . . .I fall beneath, its weight too much for me.
IV. . . . . .See my poor mother, how her tears anoint
. . . . . . . my way.
V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simon assists, reluctantly.
VI. . . . . .I lend Veronica my face for her sweet care,
VII. . . . . and stumble, retching in the fetid air.
VIII. . . . O loving weeping women, pray for me!
IX. . . . . .I fall again.
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They lift and strip me bare.
XI. . . . . .Helpless, my hands and feet to nails I give.
XII. . . . . I thirst! My God! Thus tortured, I forgive
. . . . . . . .and die.
XIII. . . . . . . . . . . . In haste they lower me from there.
XIV. . . . Swaddled with myrrh, entombed I lie. They grieve.
. . . . . . . Now may I conquer death for all, and live.