St. Eustace

St Eustace

O Christ! I saw you there upon

The ragged antlers of

The animal I’d sought to slay—

Caught and fixed above

The hart I’d chased into a brake.

The weary, roosting daylight

Had found a home within the woods;

Had settled in its flight

Upon a cliff near where I stood—

Had settled upon the brink

Where a breathless stag then stood.

Snatches of sky bloomed pink

Behind the tree’s crisscrossing branches—

O Christ! I saw you there

And now I see your form around

The ends and edges where

There lies the world’s purported bounds.

After the vision came warnings—

Of wreck and loss and heartache fierce

To claim every clear morning’s

Light a lie and counterfeit.

And yet all in a morning’s

world of blue and dim-lit air,

I’ve watched a goldfinch scorning

The prick and grasp of thistle-seed thorns

Beneath his cord-thin feet.

O Christ! I saw you there again—

A wing of gold that’s beat

Too high and bright to bear—bright notes

Too high and sweet—a ruby

Crown encircling. Bright ruby

And thorns meet. Beauty

Bending down among the blooms

Whose purple’s long since ceased;

Down among the ragged thorns,

Settling down to feast.