God stepped on my shadow today.
I felt the tug of his foot fall
here in the charterhouse courtyard
at the bright-hot pitch of noon.
From the valley, a blue updraft
of dust and seeds and wings.
In the cork-oaks and olive trees,
cicadas stirred their bones.
But inside that black splash
of no light, I stood alone.
From the deep, cool limewashed chapels,
into the fallen cloisters, through
the tangled, pungent maquis binding
graveyard crosses to the ground,
Certainty paces with her novice, Hope.
Shadows abound here – hard, black
manifestos, chiselled out of the light
that infects the world. In the sacristy
ghost windows lie embedded in the flagstones,
conduits to another place. But Certainty
steps lightly, followed close by Hope,
immaculate. Doors can be closed and shutters
drawn together. Lectio divina, mandatum
and the silence of the night.
Here, where I wander strung between
solstice and equinox, I am either trapped
inside this shadow or I trail it over stones
like an unshed skin. Man or master,
what I know is that where the light falls
I shall interrupt it, cast my cruciform
over the earth from dawn to dusk.
Old engine sun will charge my fuse
for free. I will stalk myself in black,
uncertain, short on hope, until God climbs
back into the machine, and then
beyond where all is shadow.
