A Sonnet for the Feast of All Saints

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards,

Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,

It glances from the eyes, kindles the words

Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright

With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,

The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.

Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing,

He weaves their threads into the web of being.

They stand beside us even as we grieve,

The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,

Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above

The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,

To triumph where all saints are known and named;

The gathered glories of his wounded love.

“The gathered glories,” Sounding the Seasons, p. 58.