By a Far Star's Account
By a far star's account
it was an ordinary night, and yet
it wasn't, if you knew
and you held it against the earlier nights
and days, their shape and cadence
layered in pleasant repetition.
The water loved the company of wind.
It well knew the swoop
of birds, their searching endless,
the silver constancy of fish, its own
ritual of slipping in
to lick the hem of earth, the seamless
appointed rejoining of self
to self, the streaming
fingers of electric bone,
and then the high quiet
released, settling the spent edge
of every storm.
All of these, and more,
whirled in the time and space of being
a Galilean sea.
But nothing known before,
no elemental mix, no gleaming orb,
no single thing
inanimate or animate
had ever shaken it like this-
the liquid lifting, trembling,
slaked, for one bright moment,
as the feet of Jesus strode across its face.
By a far star's account
it was an ordinary night, and yet
it wasn't, if you knew
and you held it against the earlier nights
and days, their shape and cadence
layered in pleasant repetition.
The water loved the company of wind.
It well knew the swoop
of birds, their searching endless,
the silver constancy of fish, its own
ritual of slipping in
to lick the hem of earth, the seamless
appointed rejoining of self
to self, the streaming
fingers of electric bone,
and then the high quiet
released, settling the spent edge
of every storm.
All of these, and more,
whirled in the time and space of being
a Galilean sea.
But nothing known before,
no elemental mix, no gleaming orb,
no single thing
inanimate or animate
had ever shaken it like this-
the liquid lifting, trembling,
slaked, for one bright moment,
as the feet of Jesus strode across its face.