Iron

A time to rake; to search embers, to pore over resurrected, fire-damaged relics. On an ancient shore driftwood, fagots, and reeds are heaped up onto a pyre of time. After the fire there is a sorting. a probing for talismans and trinkets. Before the flames, flesh had hidden them, in its open wounds. An iron crucifix; smutter tarnished, lays blackened by the quick flames. It is held up to the sun, by a tattered man of woe. Death’s archeologist wipes this soot-seared icon, with a sweat-stained rag. Other artifacts are long drowned, they wait for the hands of fishermen to haul them in, to return them to a modern-day Nazareth, there, Islamic street traders still sell religious curios for Israeli shekels.