Blog Post

The Forest of the Stylites

by Scott Cairns

Feast of the Commemoration of the Miracle Wrought by Archangel Michael in Colossae

Anno Domini 2020, September 6

—for Warren Farha

The way had become unbearably slow, progress

imperceptible. Even his hunger had become

less, little more than a poorly remembered myth

of never quite grasped significance. And the field

he now glimpsed far ahead as a failed

forest whose cedars—bleached and branchless—clearly reached

past the edge of his sight. Occasional, erratic

movement at the tops of a few distant trees spun

his bearings some, induced brief vertigo, recalled

to him his hunger, if as a wave of nausea,

which abated, then poured back as he drew near and the trees

transformed to pillars, each topped by an enormous

weathered flightless bird enshrouded in a rag.

*Originally published in Scott Cairns, Recovered Body (New York: George Braziller Publisher, 1998), p. 59. Reprinted by Eighth Day Books.

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