The Walking Tour #2

A poem

At the town of Cashel
We make camp on our pilgrimage to the homeland
And ascend the mountain to the Rock there
To witness transfiguration

And at the summit we face the enemy:
Toll booths, rope barriers, profane historians in uniformity
Scrambling, their digital payment system went offline
And now tourlings huddle around the tour mother
Awaiting further directions; and here I breach from the flock,
To the welcome of a new day.

Wandering through the open chapel of ancient stone,
I am a friar lost in psalmody,
Among a hoarse and tottering choir, our voices thrown
Up into the whipping wind, wind peeling across 
My tonsured crown, here in this holy upper room;
And in a gated and pitted cell on the northern front, I am a prisoner
Hard wood heart staggering to breathe
Under the weight of intercessory prayers,
Angels’ wings like anvils betray judgement;
And strolling through the grounds pebbled with epitaphs
I am a vessel, a glowing conduit
Well-oiled in the currents of grace,
Whispered prayers most efficiently distributed, turning
Through a wheel of beads that chime against brown lapel.

And sinking back into sense knowledge,
The mob’s mutterings gathering into earshot,
I am a young man in the 21st century,
Descending from the mountain of transfiguration,
To a world far more brutal and pragmatic;
Yet I descend reassured, knowing again that this time is as the past
And that past is as present as ever, cycles upon cycles.