The Ekphrastic Review
  • Ekphrastic
  • Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Writers
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Submit
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
    • Merch
  • About
  • Contact

John Baptizes Jesus at the Odney Pool, by Margaret Mackinnon

9/22/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Baptism, by Stanley Spencer (UK) 1952.


John Baptizes Jesus at the Odney Pool

You had not known you belonged to such a region
until Spencer took you there, until he showed you
Cookham, where God made a detour down High Street,

past Fernlea to the Odney Pool,
mineral-laced water near the Thames
where the artist once swam as a child.

All’s inverted now. Heaven’s here--
in the languid pool, where, amid the bathers
in their ordinary, black-knit suits, God’s only Son’s

made known. Here’s John, an odd man in skins,
bristled and untamed, and Jesus, his face 
that of any villager. No one seems surprised

as this little miracle unfurls. The scene is crowded,
narrow space filled with the press of bathers
on this afternoon of gossip, summer voices

left over from childhood’s drowsing.
Some of the villagers are napping, stretched out
in quiet leisure on the bleached stone steps.

Others gaze calmly as John pours water
from a copper bowl over the head of God’s
beloved boy. Why should they stand amazed?

It is you who are changed in this anointing,
seeing the world through the painter’s eyes,
its cold waters turned tender and familiar

in the fading light, this low cast that alters all.
Remote things join in me, Spencer wrote.
Life quickens here--
                                                                                                   
Of course, they’ll all depart too soon,
making their way back toward tidy houses,
predictable patterns, now rearranged--

but look, before you leave,
at the broad water-meadows that flood each spring,
where colour’s splashed

on this dully-lit summer day,
where you seek some last pleasure
in the pale English sun. And there--

you can just see those three lone trees
he painted, trees his young daughters loved
for the way they seem to march past

the horizon to some other world--
and always back to Cookham, its quiet lanes
where none of us is missing now.  

Margaret Mackinnon

This poem first appeared in The Los Angeles Review.

​Margaret Mackinnon’s work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, and The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review. Her first book, The Invented Child, received the 2011 Gerald Cable Book Award and the 2014 Literary Award in Poetry from the Library of Virginia. Naming the Natural World, a chapbook, was published by The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review in 2018. She lives in Richmond, VA.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    ​​Find a writer, artist, or poem, etc. by searching here:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • Ekphrastic
  • Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Writers
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Submit
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
    • Merch
  • About
  • Contact