In Isaiah’s Sandals: A Poem

Thus spake the herald: Look upon this holy hill;
Where the sun spills over ever so brighter,
Where waters leap over rock like flying buttresses
Where the ivy climbs and reaches forever upward,
Where the mist cools, conceals, and thickens
The holy summit, like thunder congealed into stone.
Enlarge thine eyes, that thou may receive this light
Enlarge thine heart, that thou may understand this beauty.

Look up on this holy hill;
Like the morning from a Romance long forgotten
Like the evening of a tragedy bitterly remembered,
Crying like gulls by the shore,
Rachel weeping for her children,
And she refused to be comforted,
Because they were no more.

I have stood over the valley of dry bones
I have lain in the valley of dry bones
And am the chorus that whispers what is only
A moaning of reeds in the wind:
Resurrect us, resurrect us, resurrect us!
Give us what we cannot ask.
We have no lips to cry, no hands to receive
No ears to hear the shepherd’s voice,
No eyes to recognize him if he were to find us.

I know the shame of being dead.
And yet I may be so bold as to ask
That you break the bonds of all that is possible
That I may obey your commands.
It is not like a love story of a man and a woman
But like a love story only in the aching
As if a river, seized by some emotion, were to throw itself out of
Its bed and rush back up the mountain from which it sprung.

The river’s eye looks to the holy hill
The dove and raven, lion and lamb
Flower and thorn and thistle and stone
Rush upward toward the holy hill.
It is only I, whom the God of the mountain loves
Who hesitates, trips, trembles,
While my cousins rush onward.
Forgive my hesitation, for my hesitation has cost all of history
To miss the mark must be paid with everything.

Peace, spake the herald.
May it be that thou should stand, undeserving,
In the mudprints of Isaiah’s sandals,
And kiss in the pattern of that prophet
The molten mountain stone which purifies the impure.
There. Unseal thy lips that thou should speak
In a manner fitting to the occasion,
Which is best construed as utter silence. Look,
I shall take your left and she shall take your right;
We will lead you through the gates.
Do not think of what you shall say to Him. Look.
You will know then what to say.

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