There was a man who was a fraud.
Incarcerated, He found the Lord.
“I am here for my dereliction,
But why are you in this situation?”
“I heard a soul call out my name,
a spirit in a world of pain.”
“Tonight he dies by lethal injection.
I came to hear his last confession”
“He killed a young girl”, Charles Colson said,
“Surely, it’s just when he, too, is dead.”
“I see that Justice in your mind
is of the eyeless, toothless kind.”
“On you, the irony is lost,
But his gurney is shaped like my cross.”
“He bears the cross known as regret,
His crown of thorns awaits him yet.”
“Forgive me, Lord”, the Felon sighed
“my rush to judgment and my pride.”
“ Let me be reborn this night,
that I might show the world your light.”
He spoke this as a humble prayer,
to a man no longer there.”
The Lord had moved to the bedside
Of the one who would be crucified.
Charles Colson, one of the villains of Watergate, was "born again" and found the Lord while in prison. In this poem I take this literally to set up a dialogue. The poem is a meditation about Capital Punishment, which I have come to be against.
