REVELATA CELESTIA ( A RHAPSODIC TRANSFIGURATION )

 

I remember lying on a hillock

as a small boy with some friends,

watching the sky up above...

 

We are having a competition -

who would be the first to guess

which object each passing cloud

resembles most closely.  

There goes a giraffe,

followed quickly by an elephant and a dog;

one looks exactly like our history teacher,

making us burst out in fits of laughter.
 

Another resembles for all the world

that girl in my class

on whom I have a secret crush

and so I say nothing,

letting my best friend win that round

with his claim that it looks just like a rotten potato.

Suddenly the clouds redden

and start to mold themselves into globular shapes,

identical in appearance to red blood cells.

 

I can even see within each cloud

the inner architecture a cell is comprised of,

the nucleus in the centre,

the mitochondria moving around the perimeter.

Not only does the appearance of the clouds change,

more than that,

the very nature of their motion

acquires a completely new aspect.

 

No longer are they drifting
in their usual random, pointless ways. 
 

Instead they are now moving
with that unmistakable and inimitable sense

of purpose that only living matter

and all matter saturated with the breath of life,

from tiniest bacteria upwards, possesses.

Off in the far distance

an old grey-bearded man dressed

in flowing white robes is making his way

across a deserted field of grass

in a manner most inconsistent

with his advanced age.

 

He skips like a playful boy

and every few steps he jumps up high

into the air and does a complete rotation

with his decrepit body.

We hear him shouting out in high excitement,

he doesn't even stop or look in our direction

but his words are clear and seemingly

reverberate all the way to the horizon:
"Don't you see, Boris?

This is the long-awaited sign from Him Up Above!

God, too, is The Son of Man!

God, too, has blood rushing through His veins!

I can now die in peace,

knowing that the Prophecy has come to pass!"

Reviews

[Toni Prehoda Kahler]

So much energy in this form! The phrasing allows me to breathe my way through it.
Profound, and you have made it even more personal, adding the words spoken to yourself. For some reason I think of the priest (Simeon?) who spoke something similar when he at last saw the baby Jesus in the temple...
As before I so enjoy the beginning stanzas, the cloud-gazing, and in particular the fresh fourth stanza.
And the image of old, decrepit man skipping and jumping like a youth speaks hope, like Life touching death, defeating it.
I especially like that this has turned from cloud gazing to deeper vision.

[~angelalala~]

you possess an amazing gift for story-telling. this is a very intriguing tale. one i can relate to, as when i was a child, i always feared looking up at the sky, seeing in horror it parting or changing, & the return of 'god' as in the book of revelations (my parents were pentecostal, aka very religious). i've had nightmares such as this. sometimes i still look at the sky & imagine it. you've told this story very uniquely, i love the character of this old man, who comes walzting in at the last minute, in a rather peaceful time as you sit and watch the clouds. you could even make it in story form, telling us this story, going into more detail, what is actually happening to the sky? where did the old man come from? but as it is, its still a great, mysterious, fascinating write. well done.