On Christ and Coral

“Late have a loved you, beauty ever ancient and ever new,” said the African doctor of souls. But Augustine did not know how late. Late as in billions of years after whatever it is we call the universe began. I too will address you, Lord, as he did, though so much later than he did. Later in cosmological time than Augustine knew, later in life than he wrote, for I am older than he was when, in his early forties, he penned his Confessions. And later, of course, in human history than when Augustine addressed you, even if that minor interval of sixteen hundred years evaporates in the face of your timeless—no, make that timeful—beauty.