Hermit (Poetry)

Much later they had called him saint
and named the isolated cave
they claimed he’d taken refuge in
marked it on the tourist map
the spot turned holy in the interim
of more understanding centuries.

Cut deep into the sheer cliff’s face
that stark cell became his home —
his simple church of sea-wet stone.
And no one bothered him — the madman
with his monkish way of living
chanting at the storm-whipped sky.

He had the company of birds
and maybe angels, too
clinging to that lonely lump of coast
where currents lashed unmoving rock
the ocean spat obscenities
then in the calm a sunset brought
                                him visions...

He spoke to God and God replied
to modest prayers — the sea provided
all his needs thrown up along the shore.
His figure seen at dawn and dusk
combing a wild battered stretch of beach
spray-soaked as he gathered wood for fuel.

What good he did unwitnessed where
the elements of sea and air
fought so fiercely with the land —
scourged him as he struggled to survive.
And what demons came to taunt and turn
                                his mind
are unrecorded — all imagined — staring down

a narrow set of steps cut rough to reach
the mouth of that poor cave.
More fanciful the lingering smell
of a fish and seaweed supper after evensong —
sea voices and the organ of the waves
accompanying his wheezy offering.

A thousand years and suffering is gone
to legend — he is shadow. Even bone
is lost when ground to dust and blown
seawards — he’s a mote in God’s good eye
the crazy man — the hermit with no friend
to bury him with words to give him peace.