Forged treasure found in rock.
Fit to fashion a tray for a head. Not bread.
Carved and trimmed, the finest for the finest king, or so they said.
The sparkling-spined rim circumferencing a bloody brow.
It gazes and glazes now.
On journey.
Rocks razed from mountains rough
that have seen enough
to barely contain their silence much longer.
Weighing the world’s wood, wondering on the Word-ed wood,
thrashed in the stony ground.
Fit for roads, for bridges, or for the wedges in boots
and in a child’s hand. Playing Hopscotch. But all have seen
greater things
beyond any such glory
as these.
Stones still shining from the whitest white ever shown.
None would match the glimmer they grasped.
A new plate, not for gore, but a feast. New Bread.
A meal the wooded-Word would share.
Share with those whose foot’s dust from stones he’d cleanse.
Dust from the white rocks washed from the Rock who would range
from the blood of the Wood to his own in due time.
Stones somewhat shifting
to make way for the wood weighed down,
carved one day, for a tray.
Serving, now, the bloodless Word.
Trampled by feet unkempt.
Washed by hands unstained.
Loved by the one who yet made both.
Adored by some, but
used and unnoticed for far too long.
Housing him now in wood with fellow stones.
Would that they might wave,
or smile, or nod, or wink,
one to another.
Knowing their infinite, eternal, immortal secrets
passed among them
like the sound of the first naked cry of shame
and the sound of the naked cry from the Wood.
Stories and secrets, saved in stages in still-soft slits
as seeds falling from limbs above.
None else to hear or hand on such love.
Stones on heads. “Crowns.” Really, mimicry. Head on stone, a true crown.
Hitchhiking in shoes, then made for meager rounded trays of food. True Food.
They are not jealous of the wavering wood.
How the little ones must know much more than these “little Messiahs”
shaped to shoulder the Anointed one
in seraphic spheres, set on spherical tongues,
incapable of discriminate thought.
Simply serving.
Preaching, too, with no regard for time.
Steadfast giants
sculpted into more intricate forms.
Hearts they raise, inspiring piety, glorifying into the night:
God’s natural acolyte.
Energy ebbs, zeal wanes.
(Over days, years, and generations.)
Man sleeps while they continue praise.
And isn’t it funny how we, trees that we are,
crave dazzling white through crimson-shot eyes
forgetting the stone once turned away.
The Rock who regarded the rolled-away rock,
reeled in sorrow turned delight
that one happy octave.
Charged to chant throughout all creation,
in roads and boots,
in hands and feet,
in play,
in caves and crevices,
in chapels and churches,
silently.
But chanting no less.
Yes,
the stones cry out.
✠
Image: Rocks on a Beach (Public Domain, CC0 1.0 Universal)
Written by:
Br. John Thomas Fisher, O.P.
Br. John Thomas Fisher grew up in Easley, SC. After becoming a Catholic in high school, he studied philosophy and French at the University of South Carolina. Upon graduating, he worked at a bookstore and church doing maintenance for a year before entering the Order in 2013. Brother John Thomas first became acquainted with the Dominicans during a trip in college to Rome. On DominicanFriars.org