Voyage of the Prodigal: A Poem by Mary Lowell

It was not so dark the last I looked;
the stars there were could still be counted,
and the moon was a frail lost ship,
not the queen she is now of this indigo ocean.

Off there, so far away I can only believe,
maidservants are lighting the porches
as brother with his staff drives home the herds
where Father wept when I begged
to go free.

He would not know me now,
a swine-man’s boy
stripped of robe and ring,
and his body man would look away,
then meet me from ground to the knee.

Still, I will go while this darkness wears
the memory of his eyes as a harbor
and run through the shadows
to that glittering port
where the least of his servants are free.

I see him now as last I saw him
on the way I left and am now returning,
running to meet me as the first strobes of sun
throw off every shadow between us.

Sunday of the Prodigal (1999)
Second of the four-week cycle prior to Great Lent