THE MONK’S HALO

It’s not as he thought, from goodness

        the faint nimbus grows. His brow is pained

surprise, as if needles were circling the

        tonsured skull, his fingers half-through the

inchoate, flickering, copper-colored halo, and

        palms pushing down on a tattoo of purplish

pinpricks pock-marking his crown.  In

        the open mouth and staring eyes a wonder

and doubt. Beginning in the bottom right of

        the painting, like a series of stained-glass

windows, small rectangular panels that span 

        the four sides of the canvas, the monk is shown

in fourteen separate scenes, his progressive

        Stations of the Cross toward the Calvary of

this discovery. Through his heart a

        metaphorical spear, luminescent with

specks of blood, like tears, falling. He is

        dressed in an undyed gray wool habit, cowl

thrown back so his full face is seen.

                Fleshy, with a scraggly beard, he is

past middle-age, and face lined with deep

        cuts. His head is tilted upward, and all around

him, coming from above, in a fine glaze, like

        rain, over the entire scene, a pointillist flickering

of minute blue and white drops, that

        blurs and intensifies the monk’s stunned face.