Incarnation

By Royal Rhodes

---

The veteran chaplain
spoke of God sometimes
hitting the still world
with the force of a hint

and poets like Eliot
and later ones heard
the hint itself understood
in being called by love

the chain of guesses
in how you gesture
in all the ways I yearn
are brokenly offered, received

like telescopes positioned
in flat desert wastes
that record processions
of stars and a meteor flash

your presence outside
me and inside me
gives me sudden breath
that surpasses my breathing

so that I exhale
your name you give me
in what was empty air
that answers: I know

the bright world I thought
as whole was wholly you
and from that living atlas
it reveals only you

here under a pear tree
with temptations of being
I can release the need to be
other than one with you.

---

Royal Rhodes taught religious studies for almost 40 years. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Ekstasis, Ekphrastic Review, The Seventh Quarry, and The Montreal Review, among others. His poetry and art collaborations have been published with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.

Royal's other work on Foreshadow:
A Road Through Ohio Spring (Poetry, April 2023)
A Pilgrim's Song (Poetry, May 2023)
Journey to Silence (Poetry, July 2023)
Remember David (Poetry, July 2023)
Magnolia (Poetry, October 2023)
A Morning Walk into Light (Poetry, November 2023)
A Crisis of Angels (Poetry, December 2023)
Birth Night (Poetry, January 2024)
Sweet the Wood, and Sweet the Nails (Poetry, May 2024)