The replay

Christian Century, Jan 31, 2001 by Rod Jellema

(The third day after Epiphany, 1996)

   That shine of green patch in the sky I saw
   waving a sign through fog and wet branches--
   three dawns have passed and still I wonder
   what I saw.

   Maybe the paper from a giftbox of pears, green tissue
   the wind took up with, lifting the skirt sky high,
   over the rooftop at the end of my street, the little
   nunnery

   where the sisters who teach at Our Lady of Lourdes,
   freed from black habits, shine their Monday windows.
   But it also might be what their breaths told winter
   in morning prayer,

   thanking God for glass, lessons, fresh streams
   of light. Surely it wasn't what I first thought--
   a green kite rudely jerked from a child's hand. This thing
   held its diamond

   shape too calmly as it flashed a rising image
   that would prompt any nun who might look up
   to cross herself. But now that it's blown far past
   Our Lady,

   it's oriental brocade from the East, torn from the cloak
   of an ancient king, interweaving a swatch of song
   from a waitress--African, walking alone to an early bus,
   her prayer

   snagged and riding a star--and now it arcs through the
   doze
   of an old night watchman, tending his brickyard, watching
   from seven towns west of here, who shrugs off his whim to
   follow the star--

   not meant for the likes of him, he says, too much
   like a dream. He needs some coffee. And anyway it's almost
   morning, he says, almost light now, almost time to go
   home and
   sleep it off.