Fell to Earth Here (Fallen Christ Sculpture) by Jan Sutch Pickard

Fell to earth here
like those erratic boulders
brought over from the Ross of Mull
by the ice sheet:
covering a few miles in centuries
of scraping, grinding,sliding,
painfully commuting
before finding a footing on Iona –
rosy granite among grey gneiss –
out of place yet at home.

So this block of stone from Kemnay
far to the east:
quarried, commissisoned, carved,
came on a long journey, taking years:
resting here, welcomed there.
It was never a dolorous way
except for the last day
when gale matched grief
and doubt about surviving
this last mile of wild water.
But, care of Calmac, made it across
and fell to earth here.

Hit the earth hard
and ah, now it hurts
Jesus is falling
under the burden of the cross,
carrying our mortality –
the concentration of our fears –
crushed under the weight
of all those words
of hope and balme and power
we lay on God.

Jesus is falling,slantwise,
like salt rain before the gale
like sweat, like tears;
falling in silence
under a grey sky
and with barely a witness.

A stone from a long way off
is pinning him down here
on muddy earth, in a field of cows,
against the fence,
outside the vallum –
the boundary of blessing –
on common ground.

The glacier of time
crawls on and melts.

The stone has come to rest
where it will stay
while generations pass and pause:
deciphering its story,
seeing the skill that shaped,
the faith that carried it across the water,

the love that moved
maker and made,
carver and maker.
So this stray stone found
its place in the universe:
falling to earth here.