The weary floorboards creak to bear
The millstone thoughts I wear so heavy
This brooding head I bow, and sigh
And I incline this chin upon a moody breast
Downward drops my gaze
And falls to land upon those ancient planks
That hold my mortal weight
A burden I alone could never carry
Those beams will not forsake their load
Till the hour they break themselves.
I look upon those humble planks
And a swell of thanks springs upward
From a font forgotten, a secret well
Preserved in hidden chambers of the heart,
And like the drop that overflowed a basin
The fleeting look of tenderness
That mended all my wounds
That tended my afflictions
That turned my trials to pleasure
And turned my tears to treasure
Like the fabled straw that broke the camel’s back:
The floorboards underneath me crack,
And open outward like a mystic fan
Or the feathers of a falcon’s wing
Or the plumage of a peacock’s tail
That now can only pale before this vision:
My onetime planted feet now stand
Upon the starry sky
The Milky Way, unfathomed, spans
All strewn about with dying light
That ferry messages of cosmic plights
And record our destiny together—
A sight surpassing time and measure.
I raise my eyes, and there behold
Without mistake: the nails
They hammered through those guileless palms
The stakes they drove
Into those naked feet, to fix them
To that faithful stoic wood
As they raised the Cross on Golgotha.
The above is slightly reworked from a poem included in Scattered Leaves: poems collected (2020).