Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, August 6th, 2025.

In the Christian liturgical calendar, it is the Feast of the Transfiguration.

This event in the life of Jesus, where he takes Peter, James, and John

up to the top of Mount Tabor, and is transfigured in glory before their eyes.

His clothing shines with heavenly light.

Moses and Elijah, the great prophets, appear, as the disciples are given a brief glimpse of transcendent heavenly existence.

Ever reliable on occasions like these is the Anglican poet priest Malcolm Gait,

whose collection, sounding the seasons, is full of sonnets, 70 to be exact, marking various feast days and occasions in the Christian year.

So today's poem is his sonnet, Transfiguration from that collection. I'll read it once, say one or

two words, and then read it one more time. Here is Transfiguration.

For that one moment, in and out of time, on that one mountain where all moments meet,

the daily veil that covers the sublime and darkling glass fell dazzled as feet. There were no angels full of eyes and wings,

just living glory full of truth and grace. The love that dances at the heart of things

shone out upon us from a human face, and to that light the light in us leaped up, we felt quicken somewhere deep within a sudden blaze of long extinguished hope trembled and tingled through the tender skin nor can this blackened sky this darkened scar eclips that glimpse of how things really are.

I'm a big fan of the directional emphasis in this poem, rather than presenting the phenomena

that the onlookers behold, and it's almost as if the speaker in this poem is one or all of the disciples that Jesus took along with him up to the top of the mountain.

And they speak in that we or that us, that plural, which can include all of humanity.

And they do not describe the event as something unnatural or anomalous,

putting in, breaking into reality, like some kind of alien invasion.

But rather, they describe it as something unnatural disappearing or being done away with.

The darkling glass that fell dazzled at his feet harkens to the words of St. Paul.

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