Theophany (for Brenda Wood)

Sitting in church this morning,

Out of the story of the Transfiguration,

Distant memory of you

Returns, fifty years later:

We are ten years old,

At George Washington Elementary School.

Standing in the lunch line:

Suddenly, my classmates part,

And I glimpse a vision of you,

Eternally in that instant,

Incan princess,

Luminous in brightly coloured brocade,

Goddess glowing

Through your temporal person.

I blink, and you are your ordinary self again.

But for me forever after,

You are imbued

With the Divine,

And the Divine with You.

And so I wonder:

Where are you now?

                        -4 March 2011