Transposing Deity

Rounded shoulders loom over my chest, so tight
burdened by my cross: is it like yours?
Pressed nose-close the ground all light absorbs
where darkness drowns already-strainéd sight.
Jaundiced doldrums swallow dispirited hope,
I look up the deep hole to see only
the tiniest of light halos so very far above me.
The best of things you symbol-forth are crushed,
oozing glory shared: olives, grapes, virtues.
Sheep sheared leap the ground eschewing.
You, Lord, are the vine dresser, shepherd, light
while I John’s dark night—or illusion sparking pride.
I am a worm and no man, yet of all things
you distill hope smallest that worms might feed
on flesh and blood to become something greater
—to metamorphize and transpose deity.


Toby F. Coley has a doctorate in Rhetoric and Writing from Bowling Green State University and teaches courses at a university in Texas. His creative work has been featured in the venues such as the The Windhover; Black & White; Red Ochre Press; The Cresset and others. He has published a book with Peter Lang Press and has published on C.S. Lewis in VII: The Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center as well as Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal. He is also a student in the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas.


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