Glasses misted, hair bedewed with droplets
I ascend the temple steps crowned with crests
Of adoring sun-children carpeting
The way, ablaze in their hour of glory
Before they whither or are grazed, yet not
Before the painter has given them voice
For all time heralding my arrival
Sudden to the scene still shod, yet feeling.
At base the cauldron crowns fallen sculptures
Filled with stories leaning on each other
Confiding and comparing tale on tale
In whispers and assertions without words

Steam thick above the boil be-robes a raised
Rock where ten-point prince beholds me coming
Warily deliberating whether
To draw me or guard the baptismal font
While he himself is crowned by older boughs
Bending low long before he was a fawn
And at that time were wreathed with gushing leaves
Now gone, giving way to bare arms reaching
Greener court above where yet another
Crystal goblet crashes end over end
Forever making song of jutting stones
And thunder of the solid liquid throng

Watching this, the adamantine face splits
With cascade driving between tectonic
Walls fossilized in mid-fall: the ‘Amen’
To the river’s wild ‘Yes!’ diving headlong
Down to billows breaking boulders bruised with
Lichen scars and calcified shooting stars.
Once dashed, some drops trace paths back to the crest
Where smooth effluent source secludes himself:
Dominion forbidden to those unschooled
In ascending fathomless mysteries
Tethered to the chalk marks of the fathers

At last eyes search the crown of clouds atop,
Swathing pinnacles signaling lordship
Yet joyfully submitting to the blue.
The crown of crag and cloud calls further up
And further in to unseen dramas where
Snow, horn, and paw play out their epic game
While mid-heaven princes observe the joust.
Then they themselves stand at the coming king
Whose train a deluge brings reaching deeper
Than canvas tones to murals occluded
Behind the veil of heart, and flesh, and bone.

• « Hopkins Gives the Windhover a Voice
• Rembrandt Invites You Into His Storm »