My sandals are deeply stained
with blood from the steep slopes and peaks
of my penitential stones, and still, not once
in my years of observance have I been granted
a vision.
Worse, in my repeating dreams,
birds flock to feast on my sins, crying: spite,
scrupulosity, pride pride pride. In defeat, in defiance,
I take my stance atop this pillar, spread my arms
to the heavens. Stay.

Thus begin the decades of my lessening,
seasons of abiding Heaven’s scorch and storm,
unwinding in my wake a pilgrimage as long
as the turning of earth.
Below, my brothers, too, revolve
with the cities and graves of the plains, enduring
the circling demands of sowing and harvest,
canticle and psalm.
Each evening, one of my order hoists bread
and goat’s milk to my platform. At dawn, another
hauls down the emptied bowl. I see I am a burden
and pray to grow smaller.

In time, it becomes the way of things: a man
on a platform in the sky. No one gapes, no one cranes
in awe: unremarked, I wane in their eyes toward
sainthood.
When, day after day, my meals are lowered
from the platform untouched, they understand:
I have learned to live on air.

Now, with my flesh broken back
to its elements, my damaged soles returned to earth
after all these years, I rise into the grain, and again
into the loaves.
Because they have shared for generations
in the bounty of my bread, the birds assume
a formal demeanor winging off with my eyes.
Who can say what holy visions they see
as they go?