“The mark of holiness:” a poem

The mark of holiness

She stood in the shadows

who knows how long

watching silently from behind

the sepia photographs of my family,

her body draped in faded blue and white

with the golden rays from her heart

streaming out year after year.

I might say I discovered her

but she waited for me, with a patience

that can only be described as divine

and a gaze to match, her eyes

steady and observing, always,

from the shadows.

As I cleaned one day, I suddenly noticed

that which had been there all along,

in the shadows, and my grandmother

simply said I could have her,

although she had no memory

of how she had gotten there.

My aunt knew her story,

how my grandfather rescued her

from the trash at the post office

where he found her after she was rejected

by a family who didn’t like her chipped base,

the marred ground on which she stood,

although she still managed to stand

for years in the shadows

on the shelf where he secretly placed her.

Now she lives with us, we with her,

and she stands as a witness

of how many are rejected,

and others rescued by those

who feel the urge to watch

for holiness tossed aside

in the cold pursuit of perfection,

never realizing that the divine

sings in the brokenness

and thrives in the shadows.

–Stuart Higginbotham