Ghost Frescoes

A chubby fist and wing

float free, severed

from the landscape of human affairs.

Below, a barefoot saint

seems to straddle acres, beaming

casual self-possession, the divine

right to stake eternal claim—but

in the space between

both legs, a third intrudes,

last remnant of a man fading

to white dust. Nine hundred years ago

this wall was his. Reduced

to a toehold, he now spites

the fourteenth-century arriviste,

holding his ground with the ghost

of what he was. The saint remains

oblivious. Centuries sweep

around him like planets' rings;

the church's wheel-of-fortune

spins rose light

through plague and war.

Yet so vivid

are his blue and russet robes,

he glistens—a refugee

from a sun shower

who's arrived dripping wet, an idea

fresh from the brush of his maker.