Stigmata
That Morning
the people
woke
to a mountain top
on fire.
A red gold dawn seemed
to forget
the ancient
bounded truce
between Heaven
and Earth,
and, descending, christened
the forested crown
with flame.
They wondered
then
what had become
of them,
the small
band of brothers
who had passed
through
barely a month ago,
begging their way
towards
the foothills
lost in the mad
heart song
of faith, of divine desire.
Seeking the solitude
of spirit
that only the wild bestows
as blessing.
They were three,
and one
they did not come
to know,
cowled as he was
in smiling silence,
yet with the look of loss
about him,
as though he did not
live fully
now upon this land.
Sometimes, later,
if the wind blew right
they swore that
in the starlit silence
of the night
they could hear them
singing.
They felt sad then,
as you do
for those you do not really know.
To be lost on a mountain
in a forest fire.
How terrible.
They did not listen to
the child
whose piping voice asked
insistently
why
there was no sound
of burning,
no stampede of furred
and feathered
from this strange flame,
but only light and silence
and a stillness
until then unknown
except before
a summer storm
or sudden fall of
winter snow?
The child
was shushed,
they always are,
and sad and solemn words
were said,
and then the business of the day
began.
Eyes averted by all
except
the child
who stood and stared long
and finally
smiled.
as others' faces
turned towards
the ground
of ordinary hours,
fell into the
forgetfulness of fire,
as we so often do.
And when, by chance,
they looked again
they saw now only
a September sky
over a forest turning
autumnal gold,
and thought, well now
we must have been mistaken,
a rare dawn,
no doubt.
Some days thence,
the brothers came again,
thinner for their
mountain days
yet seeming wrapped
in wonder and singing as they
walked.
Save for him,
the silent one,
bowed and bent around
an inner burden
none could see
but all could feel.
His hooded face
unseen,
they all kept their distance,
fearing the mad
contagion
of faith, perhaps.
All that is except
the child
who found him sitting alone
beneath a tree
and offered him
the raw innocence
of her unflinching gaze,
he smiled
at her then,
as,
with the noble courage
of her age
she said,
They thought you burned in the fire you know?,
He lowered his hood
she saw his hands then,
their centres
splashed with scarlet
and with iron
from which a golden flame
now sparked,
as though
the light of Heaven,
earthed in him,
could not be contained
in him,
a vessel small
and broken
in such
fiery
blessing.
I did.
he said,
I did.
Then they laughed
a while
together
and singing,
both
went forth
to
play.
