​On The Return of the Prodigal, by Philip C. Kolin

The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt (Netherlands) 1669

​On The Return of the Prodigal
 
St. Luke’s words brushstroked with Rembrandt’s
light and shadows: the prodigal’s return for forgiveness,
his life disheveled as his clothes, pig-cote clinging to his words.
Come back, convicted, only to be a servant, one foot bare,
head shorn, his face hidden, if full a tragedy too hard to bear.
 
But it is the father who commands our eyes, his red cloak
recalling the blood and rebirth of the Passover, God’s wings
covering us from harm. For all his prominence, the father reveals
a mother’s tenderness with those soft hands and fertile blessing
as the prodigal buries his head in his father’s womb and heart,
reborn now in that embrace.
 
Still, the figures in the shadows tell a different story. The tall,
glowering older brother stands proudly erect, his hands tightly
clasped in unforgiveness, his rod a sign of his coveted power.
Another figure may be the father’s skeptical advisor. And the other
the mother, likewise removed from the father’s unrivaled love.
And where do we stand? Penitents before the loving father?
Or in the shadows jealous of the father’s forgiveness.
 
Philip C. Kolin

Philip Kolin who taught Renaissance and modern literature for over 40 years at the University of Mississippi has a long history of teaching ekphrastic poetry and writing it, too. Poems and paintings are the sister arts and he applauds this family of imagination and spirituality. He has published numerous ekphrastic poems, long and short, in many of  his fifteen poetry collections—cotton fields in Delta Tears; abbeys and convents in Benedict's Daughter; and medical facilities in Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic.