Patmos

Even today

tourists come here

for more than

the blue Aegean sea,

the little cave

carved into the

mountainside,

a cell without bars.

Anyone who takes

the boat to this

empty coast

must secretly hope

the Spirit still hovers

in the air, waits

for the next apostle

with eyes to see,

ears to hear.

If one man

can be called

out of darkness,

seized by the roots

of his hair and dragged

to the highest heaven,

so can another.

WILLIAM MILLER is an award-winning author of numerous children’s books, including Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree, Frederick Douglass: The Last Day of Slavery, and Richard Wright and the Library Card. He lives in York, Pennsylvania, where he teaches African-American literature and creative writing at York College.