Articles/Essays – Volume 47, No. 4
Awakening
After looking at Carl Bloch’s Sermon on the Mount
His thumb and forefinger raised in declaratives
Draw initial notice, but it’s the hands of those
Near him that pull me back—something almost festive
Yet closer to restrained, in the bowed, worn widow
Resting head on young hands, in the Pharisee’s sorrow
Deep behind crossed arms, in the disciple’s yearning
That aches from beard to elbows, in the slow turning
Of the man in red hat, in his widow’s peak,
The slanted blue shadow that arrives with knowing,
The veins in his forearm tightening
As he weighs what to hold on to, what to let go.