POETRY: Christ Steps Down
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
Posted Dec 3, 2002 •Permalink • Printer-Friendly VersionCHRIST STEPS DOWN
Christ steps down from a golden car onto a
lake covered with luminous berries
The silence is like silver next to black or a
hush from a mile away billowing toward us
The afternoon becomes neither sunlit nor overcast
neither morning nor evening
When he opens his gray eyes to look at us with their
gold pupils we see that his
weeping has stopped and his hands are
extending out over the world
The blue cape wrapped around his bare shoulders spreads like a
heron’s wings about to take flight but then
falls in great folds around him again as he
walks forward
each step longer than the last until he is
standing before us
Those who would cut off his head at the
neck have fled to a far country
pursued by a black flame the exact shape
of themselves
He opens his lips to speak but we are
drowned in his face and there is
nowhere we have been now that is
left for us to go and even
space has shrunk from its unwieldy furniture and cloudy windows
to his pure dimension
Wolves circle the lake like ghosts
and their howling shakes the
air which has become moonlight
Christ releases us
into the rippling reflections that
ebb with the moonlit waters to the rounded shore
to become silhouettes of trees waving
tall against the night
7/22
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