The Final Crossing
The last and everlasting epiphany of the hopeful soul
St. Francis of Assisi died in great suffering, weakened by sickness and laid upon the cold, bare ground. His death was neither hidden nor eased, yet it was not meaningless. On the contrary, it was marked by the same paradox that shaped his life: a fierce and childlike joy held fast through poverty, obedience, and pain. As G. K. Chesterton writes in his biography of the saint, “St. Francis was a poet whose whole life was a poem" (St. Francis of Assisi). He lived — and died — as one for whom even suffering was simply a call to praise. The poems that follow do not attempt to explain death, nor to soften it. Death is, after all, the last enemy and it does wound deeply. These poems instead seek to witness its meaning: not as termination, but as passage; not as defeat, but as a final act of praise largely forgotten in a material age that struggles to see beyond the veil of the physical. May we learn again to sing with St. Francis: “All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death" ("Canticle of the Sun"). "Sister Death" On the death of St. Francis Oh, what a mystery joy to see In cold and aching discipline As pain and fever resting be Upon the man who would be free Of earth and all its dreary crippling. And through the struggle, shuttered eyes, That flicker as the spirit runs about, Reveal a packing, parting soul that in no wise Believes the scientific lies That this is it—that death’s the final, futile route. Even now a remembering smile sails Over years of goodly ache, And o’er the sound of pain’s chill wails The servant of the serving nails Rests from troubadouring for His sake. Yet pendants crack resplendently As morning gustings billow sails Rigged by hopeful prayers of nights at sea. The soul embarks and gazes fixedly Beyond the haze of that which fails And forward into dawning light. "A Sonnet" The veil is seen and that behind it not, Until in parting, lifting, beauty soars To spit the soul upon the gaze it sought, As soul meets soul through newly unlocked doors. The rain becomes a silver pane as life Goes into death and through its death and on, A better peace, not won without some strife, More wonderful, past storm ablaze with dawn. Post-blizzard sanctity of covered earth Is shown to the beholding love as death Is conquered, and the joy of second birth, Inflames the soul upon the firstborn breath. And though our prayers pass through the veil that’s torn, He shows his back until our life’s reborn.