The Revelator.

The Revelator

   After the olive groves at Samothrace and fog
   which billowed up from a green sea,
   the rocky sheep path and bleating ewes,
   wind and sun--there was only memory

   to carry and a few thoughts, a few torments
   in his wet cave on Patmos as he waited
   for whatever would issue from the ceiling fissure,
   whatever vision was appointed him

   to tell Prochoros, who would write on calfskin
   when words flamed his tongue. Friend,
   do you wonder how the air must have opened
   before him as we lie among the maidenhairs
   that caress us with cool fronds? The sky is so void

   of everything except a diffuse light, that it's easy
   to imagine an ivory throne above the water-tower,
   cherubim drifting over the pin oaks and lindens,
   the saints' multi-hued robes shimmering.

   How many years of solitude, how many beatings,
   bouts with unbelief, we wonder, how many
   sleepless nights in rain, in open fields, feverish weather
   and despair before the voice we so desire

   to hear speaks? The sky is Mediterranean blue.
   Whatever wind was has ceased. The air
   is heating up, midday, and still no reason to leave
   this shade, no crack in the sky, nothing to report

   from the heartland where without a vision, the people
   perish, our friend has said, and so that ruby kinglet
   from his mulberry seems to echo. His plaintive ti-tu-whits
   seem to say, we, not he, are the aliens, the exiles.

Michael Borich teaches at Missouri State University, in the heart Ozarks.