by Alex Ward

Oh, be fierce!
Walk across the street,
bring your ragged shadow,
stab the insensate cobbles
with your cane!
Bring the siege-engines
of your eyes!
Christ is here 
in the bells and incense,
Christ is here in the
dark-eyed
icons,
the rings beneath their
eyes bespeak the
wakefulness of
eternities.
A dog comes loping,
his tail wagging sideways,
he leans against me,
lodges his snout
between my knees.
Oh, come loping
like a leper, like a beggar,
like a dog beaten down
by the rain,
for Christ is merciful, kind.
I say “Christ,” and it crackles,
I say Christ as I stab with my
cane, I say Christ as I
walk past the counting houses,
the casinos, I walk as if
swinging a censer, my body
the vessel of Christ.
Here, here I am, yes, it’s I
who raised my hand, the former
mocker, the disbeliever,
the nihilist.
I’ve walked to the water’s edge
to watch the moon of Christ rise
over the Caucasus, to watch
the new dawn made of the
night. My soul is now whiter
than any fuller could dye it,
and oh Lord,
may it extinguish
my darkness.

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Alex Rainey Ward is a poet, novelist and songwriter. The first poem he ever wrote was for an Arbor Day contest; he won, and with some other children got to plant a tree by the river. He recently became a grandfather.