A CELTIC WALL HANGING
in Saint Columba's Church,
Boothbay Harbor, Maine

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Summoning my attention from across the room
I see yarn from sheep
grazing with frolicking young
on a sunny spring green green Scottish hillside,
spun on an ancient wheel fashioned by a craftsman
from wood of nearby trees,
dyed with homemade natural dyes,
lovingly woven on a hand-crafted wooden loom
to form a Celtic cross.

The image echoes a larger cross
someone carved of stone,
standing purposefully since the eighth century
before Columba’s ancient Abbey
on Scotland’s Isle of Iona,
a green and stony outcropping
with beaches of fine white sand
contrasting deep blue surrounding waters,
growing sheep and mystics
(a place where the veil is said to be thinnest
between heaven and earth).
The weathered cross has withstood
snow and rain and ocean gales,
soaked up
one thousand three hundred years
of sunlight.

Someone with pin and fragile thread
hung the icon on the wall
so that another might linger
to wonder or ponder:
The weaving will turn to dust long before
the stone cross weathers to sand,
yet the beam linking heaven to earth,
the transverse interconnection of soul to soul
. . . shepherd, craftsman, weaver,
stone sculptor, you, me . . .
and the circle connecting all-to-all
. . . believer or not . . .
will last forever.