Sometimes a Radiant World

It is sometimes a radiant world,
this life in Christ. But only sometimes.
Sometimes I am shy, afraid to name
the body, to describe the strangers whom I love.
The little nun who was never a nun,
in her house of dusty corners, who worked
in hospitals for years, with her
smile and white curls, who studied and wrote songs
and was never beautiful, but strangely
weightless in a reappearing way,
like sunlight, high and vaporous, within
a winter day. Or the eternal neighbor
who walks within herself, never selfish
for news of others, yet always going
to the doctor with some friend who’s lost
his sight or is becoming distanced
from his mind and slowly slipping away.
She went to boarding schools and cleaned
summer cabins, one arm withered by polio,
although you’d never know it
unless you chose to notice.
She offers salvation in a neighborly way.
Or the man with infants’ hands,
so soft and unscarred that they might
have just come from the womb, who talks,
often, of cold moons and a creek-bordered farm
where his ancestors labored and died, too soon.
If I were to make a mosaic on the wall
it would have to hold them all, each figure
made of glass set in stone,
each tesserae catching light and holding it,
obscuring my perceptions and showing
that they’re limited.
When light shows brightly the forms
are almost lost, the lines of colored glass embossed
beyond simple distinctions, and I, and those I love,
hide within the radiance.

--
KPB Stevens is an Episcopal priest, poet and painter who lives in Columbus, Ohio. His work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Cardinal Sins, Squalorly, Inwood Indiana, Orion Headless and The Christian Century, as well as two EASE Gallery chapbooks, Wildernesses: Physical & Spiritual and Trespasses. His story 'My Beam of Light' was selected for The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2014.