Philosophe – a poem by Chris Monier

Philosophe 

What shocked me 
was not the January snow 
that covered the live oaks, 
but that day in September
that should have been brutal. 

Walking by the bayou,
you spoke of the leper 
the Lord made whole: 
told to show the priests 
though not to say 
where he had been.

You also recalled
what the thinker said:
when the risen Christ
told Mary Magdalene 
not to touch, 
he was showing how presence
and the need to verify it
cannot coexist.  

Turning back, I noticed 
the sugar cane was high. 
The heat had obscured
the year’s lateness. 
I thought of calendars,
lost your word.   

As big trucks rolled past, 
you said accounts differ 
about where she was 
when he told her this,
when he said noli me tangere,
and it is very likely 
she was already clinging. 

Chris Monier lives with his family in the Bayou Region of south Louisiana where he teaches French and English at Nicholls State University. He has published poetry, literary criticism, and translations of several French-language writers.