Transfiguration

Raiment white and glistening — it sounds

like a hierarch in brocade and silver 

proceeding flanked by acolytes up an aisle

of a European church, racks of candles in chapel bays,

organ rumbling stones stacked centuries ago.

It was however just you, dirty in peasant clothes

up a heap of scrub and rock, disciples drawn back, 

you talking with Law and Prophecy

about a coming death. A messiah

who fails, is mute and nailed and dies. And yet light

was everywhere, and cloud and terror 

for prostrate friends. 

                                            Let me be borne today

by this homily: how flesh gives way to light,

disciples fumbling about booths. But the path down

the mountain is to the palsied child, the writhing crowd.

r.fruehwirth

8-6-23