Cities once so vibrant

After Ephesians 1:20-23, 3:18-19

Those cities once so vibrant,

filled with people and commerce,

sights and sounds, always

the sounds of life throbbing

and growing, cloaking

themselves in proud names:

Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae,

Corinth, and not just Antioch

but Pisidian Antioch as well,

to differentiate younger

from older, Smyrna, Pergamum,

Sardis, Thyatira, Laodicea,

Philadelphia, names flowing

from the tongue like great dramas,

Greek dramas, dramas now shrouded

by the closed curtain, and now

behind the curtain lies only outlines

in stone, implications without certainty,

suggestions only of the wife

shouting down the street

at her husband or child. Instead,

only the sounds of the wind

are heard, wind without memory,

the taste of aging dust.

Photograph by Megan Sanford via Unsplash. Used with permission.

I walked from the church

I walked from the church
to the street, the war zone,
the cold, the fear, the despair
of darkness, of the street.

The wounded and dying
reached toward me,
the sick clutching
at my ankles, weeping.

I walked from the church,
the light wasn't following
the light was leading
shining in the darkness.

I walked from the church
into the street, seeing
the ruins around me,
and knelt.

Photograph by Lilla Frerichs via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Archaeology

The excavation continues, this hill,

this lump of dirt and dust telling

a story. The workmen spaded

carefully; an unthinking jab

a potential act of destruction, as

they descended through years and

decades, centuries, millennia separated

by seconds on the clock, often. They

dug and shoveled, sifted and strained,

to reach the beginning, the first cause,

a mere sixty years before.

Photograph by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Ruins on a hill

The temple, a ruin, stands

stark, still, at the top

of the hill, gazing

down at the ocean

below. A small affair,

it lacks the majesty

and presence of Diana

or Athena or Aphrodite,

or Zeus, or the Coliseum

or the Forum. Instead,

its intimacy invites presence

and attendance, the broken

columns offering an embrace.

The floor’s eroded mosaic

still bears the outline

of a fish.

Photograph by Graham Ridgewell via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.