Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
George Moore
The South Cross


I approach archaeology
as a skeptic might a cross,
but feel the need to know
what spurred the carvers on,
the faith that gave them
a decade or more of strength
to yield hammer and chisel
against unyielding stone.

I finger the relief and
disbelief seems to wane,
although I cannot backtrack
to that time of science
mixed with magic.
The passion was a poet’s,
if monk or abbot, a person
with the word roughhewed
on the surface of the mind.

The scriptorium knew
to sway the Celts it took
the fantastic: David all night
in the lions’ den, St. Peter’s
bringing Simon the magician
down, crashing into earth
as he flew about the land.

But the truth was ecce homo,
this human thing that could
not be scripted, this talisman
at the center of the ring-head,
with arms like the sun-god’s
but stretched into their world.
George Moore's  poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, North
American Review,  Colorado Review, Southern Poetry Review,  and many
other journals.  A six time Pushcart Nominee, his most recent collections
are Headhunting (Edwin Mellen, 2002), and an e-Book, All Night Card Game
in the Back Room of Time (Pulpbits, 2007).  He teaches literature and writing
with the University of Colorado, Boulder.