The following poem is quite different from those that have appeared previously on this blog. For one thing, it’s longer (about 13 minutes). Instead of the brevity and sharp focus of a sonnet, it is an extended meditation on the Transfiguration of Jesus and what it meant for the three disciples who witnessed it: Peter, James, and John. The story (found in Mark 9, Matthew 17, and Luke 9) follows on Peter’s Confession of Jesus as Messiah a week earlier and leads, in its turn, into the story of the demon that the disciples could not cast out. This is a good time of year to post it, since the Transfiguration is the gospel reading for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany (February 7th this year), just before the church year turns toward Lent.

The poem is focused on the disciples’ inability to understand why Jesus kept talking about death, before and after this astonishing vision of his glory. There are some things we simply cannot understand in our lives until we go through some sort of transformation ourselves. My inspiration for narrating a Biblical story in this way, exploring what it means for the characters, comes from the sixth-century poems of St. Romanos, which can be quite frank about the the mistakes and uncertainties of their protagonists.

For the full series of poems read on this site, click the category “Poem”  below.