Three Devotions

I.
In every other icon or mosaic at St. Luke's,
the almond shaped, Byzantine eyes
stare back at eyes of flesh
with a mixture of sorrow and surety –
a look the Turks tried to shoot out
of the Pantocrator's face on the dome
to frighten from rebellious monks.
But in the crucifixion in the narthex,
Christ's eyes are slits, and blood jets
from the black wound between his ribs.
At the base of the cross, on either side,
the upturned gazes of Mary and John sag
with grief, shards gravid with last light.
I squeeze free two tears and slump
against the marble wall, unable to turn
away from this suffering that has nothing
to do with religion and everything to do
with what we must look on as we live.

II.
The black-shawled, gray-haired matriarch
signs herself furiously, repeatedly,
before the glass case that contains
the shrunken skin and what bones remain
of the hermit of these deserted hill, Luke.
Her movements come fluid from years:
crooked hand taps squat frame,
thumping her heart as if feeding it.
She kisses the top of the case over the taut
leather fraying around his sockets –
eyes opening deeper than any icons.
She kisses the side where a black hood
stitched with red drops of embroidery
flows down his child-size body, vestments
rewoven by generations of village women.
Stepping back then, she motions
to a young German tourist wearing pastels
to make devotions likewise and won't leave
until the tourist does so, awkward at first,
planting a kiss that will bloom in her dark.

III.
Up above this 1,200 year-old monastery,
picnicking right off the tour-bus road,
a local family dances – the men
slightly drunk, eyes drowsy –
to joyously melancholy bouzouki music
in slow, smaller and smaller circles.
Their singing and steps lift, lag,
and fall with the notes, with puffs
of dust, with the last of a bottle of retsina
swigged and passed around
in the last light till empty
as the dance circles on.