Anticipation

“With clouds descending,” says the book,
the day of his appearing, thus,
might, just as any other, look
at first like when from broken skies to us
a sudden ray of sun shines through,
greening the ground on which we stand.

Some dissent. In these dark times new
wording twists; others demand
no word be true, this or its opposite.
We lack firm footing, definitions,
seeking to mean, not sure of it,
fearing to own our premonitions.

Yet wisdom, built on the Rock, relates
incipit to explicit, still yields
a universe proved finite, anticipates
the coming quantum shift, a paradox revealed
as Alpha and Omega, the cosmic plan
at last concluded, God with man
          forever.

—David Lyle Jeffrey