​Finally, a messenger has arrived from Rome;
They’re letting me leave Patmos at last.
It’s an embarrassment to the Empire
To pay these strong, fit soldiers,
Skilled with swords and spears,
To guard an old man, so ancient and feeble
That what I really need is a nursemaid
To carry me over the stones
As I descend from this remote prison of theirs.
 
They thought I was in prison,
And I let them believe it.
But how could the Roman legions
Lock out the angels
And the visions that visited me daily?
And fencing me in on the top of a mountain
In the middle of the sea,
How could they lock out the light?
 
I remember that other mountain
Radiant with light, when my master
Showed his true self to me and Peter and my brother James.
He showed us how close the spirit world is.
All we have to do is lift up our hands,
And light falls through our fingers like sacred rain.
Why did he give this gift to us and not the others?
He must have known that Peter and James would die
As he did, so he gave this gift as a consolation.
But why did he invite me?
 
They are calling for me to gather my things
Though I have no things to gather,
Having used up all the papyri with my scribblings.
Perhaps I can obtain two or three more sheets in Ephesus.
But truthfully, Patmos has been my heaven,
And I hate to leave.
I will miss the warm nights
When the full moon sparkles on the calm sea
And seventy times seven stars
Swirl like crowns in the soft black sky--
And the ancient olive trees
In the hushed darkness,
Their silvery leaves turning in the moonlight
And the scent of the lemon groves
And the soft voices of the sheep.
 
They have sent a ship to take me back to Ephesus,
That orderly place with its neat streets,
Tidy little homes, aqueducts and baths
And so many people when I’m used to being alone--
Alone with the angels and the visions, I mean.
 
I dread facing the community there, since
All the other apostles are dead--
Heroes like Peter and my brother James,
The first of the twelve to die for the Way.
A sword killed him, but nothing killed me.
What have I to offer anyone?
When I lived in Ephesus before,
I had a household and a purpose--
I knew how to write letters in Greek
And I tried to share the Word.
More importantly, I cared for the woman
He entrusted to me, the quiet lady who became my mother.
There was always light all around her
And when she fell asleep
And the angels came to take her away,
I felt lost and abandoned.
But her light never really left me.
For months after she was gone, I would see her
When I lifted my eyes to the night sky.
Her eyes were huge black glistening grapes,
Surrounded by stars,
And her face the soft warm brown of Passover loaves.
When she lived with me, her hair swirled in black curls
When she removed her head covering in the shadowy
Interior of our humble home.
As the years followed one after another and apostle
After apostle was murdered for the Word in hideous ways,
Silver threads slowly began to crown her head,
Like the Pleiades, as the Greeks call them.
 
These Greeks think they know everything about the stars,
But their constellations are nothing but pictures
From their own minds of gods they invented
In their own image.
My best friend’s mother, the Queen of the Sky,
The Queen of all my dreams, was real, a real person created by God.
But after I was brought to Patmos in chains,
My visions of her changed,
They were no longer memories
But something new sent to me on that lonely hilltop
By the angel messengers in the silence
When only the stars and the sea and the sheep spoke to me.
 
I trusted these images because of the gift her son gave to me
That day with my brother and Peter on that other hilltop
When I was still strong and healthy and young.
He wanted us to remember the light,
And in the dark, dark darkness of Patmos
I never forgot; the darkness did not overcome me.