The Voice Like a Trumpet

A Poem Inspired by Revelation 1:9-11

Upon a lonely island, ringed with restless foam,

Where wind and wave kept vigil over stone,

There walked a man whose years were worn with truth,

Whose eyes had gazed through sorrow into fire.

The gulls wheeled high above the salted air,

The sea beat slow upon the patient shore,

And time itself seemed hushed in listening,

As though the earth awaited hidden speech.

He was not king nor soldier crowned with might,

But servant bound in patience and in faith;

A brother to the suffering of the saints,

A keeper of the word no chains could bind.

For he had walked where grief and glory met,

Had heard the footsteps of the living Lord,

Had watched the light of heaven touch the dust

And turn the road of death to living flame.

Now exile was his dwelling and his cloak,

A rocky isle his temple and his cell;

Yet even there the breath of God was near,

And silence held the promise of a voice.

The day had come that memory calls the Lord's,

When heaven bends more closely toward the earth.

The quiet shore lay silver under dawn,

And stillness filled the spaces of the world.

Then sudden as the rising of the sun,

A sound broke forth behind him through the air—

Not wind, nor thunder rolling through the deep,

But clear and piercing as a trumpet's cry.

It shook the stillness of the lonely isle,

It filled the heart with trembling and with awe;

For in that voice there moved a sovereign fire,

A majesty no mortal tongue could feign.

"Write what you see," the sounding voice declared,

"Set down the visions given to your sight;

Send forth the words across the waiting lands,

To seven lamps that burn within the night."

So stood the seer between the sea and sky,

A witness on the margin of the age;

Behind him spoke eternity itself,

Before him stretched the story yet to come.

The waves continued beating on the shore,

The gulls still traced their circles in the wind;

Yet all creation seemed to lean and hear

The echo of that everlasting call.

For though the island held but one old man,

The heavens had chosen him to bear their word;

And through his hand the distant years would read

The thunder of the voice like unto brass.

O hidden hour upon a barren rock,

O moment where the veil of worlds grew thin—

From exile rose a message meant for all,

A trumpet sounding through the centuries.