The Dream
On a nameless beach in France,
revolution: “But, Jesus,” I say,
“you can't have walked on water
because you're a metaphor.”
He looks at me as though I am Iscariot,
but the prince stands next to me
with a face of clay, hair adrift
on the sooty breeze.
Jesus Christ turns away
and I see his feet
feathery and clawed,
golden like lion skin
but mangled, a mass of bone like my own.
Disciples around us flock like chattering gulls:
I am marvelous,I should write a book,
they say. They ignore
the man who has just left me
with ashes in my mouth,
who marches silently to the cold surf,
glides away on the gray waves.
Jillian Saucier
Clarion 15, 2012