Saint Francis preaching to the birds

(Workshop of Giotto, ca. 1300)

Birds drop like consonants and vowels from a single tree, array themselves in alphabetic ranks that spell the sermon back to him. Omnilect and legible, he speed-reads light as speech empties into it. He leans treelike and reaches into what's reading him out loud, the weightless shine between the denser, flying syllables. The old fixed polar stars, transmitter and receiver, fade in this attention's pure gold nowhere. Behind him, his brother monk signals in their shared, resistant language the more usable, solid fictions no realer than this but more insistent.

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