Legion of Demons

The legion of demons and the suicidal swine
came much later.
What I recall is simple––just a few words
and our friend was himself again.

For months madness
had overwhelmed him with certainty.
We weren’t surprised.

What is madness, after all,
but certainty about everything?
And he was already
inclined in that direction.

Then he explained
that he could see by our faces
who each of us was pretending to be,
and more often than not he was right.

After which
no one wanted to hear
his prophecies and premonitions—

neither his wife nor his children,
who wept for the changes he’d embraced,
nor his neighbors, who were fearful,
nor the strangers on the road
he stopped to exhort, nor the soldiers
who mocked him.

He forgave them all, since that was part of his madness.

And in this way
life continued, until one of the many
prophets of those days, passing through

with his followers,
paused, and knelt down, and said
something we couldn’t hear, and our friend

blinked his eyes in astonishment,
and was as he had been.

Later, when word got around
about the multitude of demons
he’d been possessed by,
and the two hundred swine rushing off
into the sea to escape from that evil,

there was no doubt
how much drama this prophet,
or one of his disciples,
had added to our lives.

And why not?
A savior needs his miracles to be impressive.

We understood.

After all, our friend had been restored
and was again
like the rest of us,
a man who knew what we all knew––
the stuff of day by day,
world without end, enough to get by.