Recent Apparitions

One day someone looked up and saw it--
not the dirty window it had been
for five years after the seal broke,
three floors up in a brick wall
in the Milton Hospital in Massachusetts,

not just that cloudy pane of glass
but the Virgin Mary, head bowed in sorrow.
Within a week twenty-five thousand people
arrived to see her. A boy in a wheelchair
touched the wall with his legs,

but didn't walk away. His mother wept.
Many left flowers. A man from Florida,
who'd recognized the Virgin once before
in the window of an insurance company
in Clearwater, said, "Whether or not

it's a true apparition, it's a sign to us."
For a day or two the story gets in the papers.
Then the figure starts to change
and the crowds thin out. Soon
it's only a broken window except to those

who want to remember, maybe wonder
how long she might have been there
before anyone noticed. Perhaps
every window contains a secret apparition.
Perhaps the world is full of signs,

and if we looked around we'd see things
as they really are--not just a stony hillside
and a tree, not just the bitter rain,
or that trail of smoke
always disappearing in the sky.

-Lawrence Raab