Miracle

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks

But the ones who have known him all along 

And carry him in — 

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked 

In their backs, the stretcher handles 

Slippery with sweat. And no let-up 

Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable 

And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing. 

Be mindful of them as they stand and wait 

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool, 

Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity 

To pass, those ones who had known him all along.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), poet, translator, and playwright, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1995 along with a dozen other honors, one of the major poets of the 20th century, from 100 Poems.

Scripture reference: Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12 (7th Sunday after the Epiphany B); Luke 5:18-20

Image: Healing the paralytic at Capernaum, Galway City Museum

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive 

For a day all round the peninsula. 

The sky is tall as over a runway, 

The land without marks, so you will not arrive 

But pass through, though always skirting landfall. 

At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, 

The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable 

And you’re in the dark again. Now recall 

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, 

That rock where breakers shredded into rags, 

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, 

Islands riding themselves out into the fog, 

And drive back home, still with nothing to say 

Except that now you will uncode all landscapes 

By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, 

Water and ground in their extremity.

– Seamus Heaney (1939- 2013) Northern Irish poet, Nobel Prize winner, Oxford Professor of Poetry, and one of the pre-eminent poets of the 20th century