is not (our docent says)
pictures composed of pure
bloodless light. No, it is
the generations of masters
who labored on this icon
to wrest heavenly glory
from hammered metals
and pigments of earth.
It is the young woman
who hid Madonna and Child
in the swaddling of her sack,
the commissar who shot her.
(Our docent, lifting
his shaking hand, points
to the next icon.)
See what craft can do
when acid bites
into copper,
etching the crushed
fronds of fern
under the dying virgin’s head
in such fine detail
the mortal pain becomes
a mordant beauty.
Observe the flurry of hatching
around her staring eyes,
and the object of their gaze—
a flowering thistle,
emblem of wounding
and punishment
that bristles in the sun,
each hair casting
its tiny scar of shade.
J. S. Absher’s work has been published in approximately fifty journals and anthologies, including Third Wednesday, Dialogue, Sunstone, Tar River Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, and San Pedro River Review.
