The Sand Hill Review          http://www.sandhillreview.org       2001 November

 

Saint Christopher and Child in Blue Stained Glass

 

Blue light.  Dawn

wakes in the glass the man and child

and makes

of  the same glass

and light, bluestained

the flood the child is carried through.

 

Every day, every day I have the blues,

sings Lucifer, lightbringer, father of the blues.

Christopher each dawn has the flood

and child to carry through it, carry or lose.

 

And every day he drowns anew,

each day founders in the rush of blue.

What you carry, you learn the weight of.

How can there be such weight in light?

What is the child made of?

 

Woken in the dark,

I heard Christopher singing the nevershould blues –

 

Never should have raised him up to my heart.

Never should have carried him into the water –

 

heard him singing the darkest blues

before light makes what it makes of us –

 

I was the strongest thing on earth.

I could not carry him, who could he save?

No one can save us from the water.

 

I tried to talk him back to saint

– You carried all the blues on earth

first on your back, then in your heart.

 

I held a child.

Held him as long as I could hold him,

carried him to the deepest part

and set him down.

I set him in the blues that we are made of

where we drown.

 

Each dawn you pick him up again.

 

Patrick Daly