Zechariah was the chosen priest that year,
that year like so many before it in the turn of the land and the flight of birds,
the wet and the green, the dry and the brown:
but now the holy, third lot fell upon him, the lot of incense.
It was the first time for this old man.
Amid the tonal minor of supplication
his bare feet slid across the marble;
he felt the cracks between stones pass under his poor and bare feet,
under his thick robes stiff with the eight layers of linen and coat,
under the turban that was like the bud of a flower,
under the finely woven byssus, under the weight of the nation,
he was Moses going before the tree of fire.
He tended the fire in the Holy of Holies,
the sound of singing from the Temple steps muffled,
keening like creeping, weak smoke in the folds of the heavy curtain.
Zechariah turned back to the silence and the fire,
and his thoughts,
the thoughts of his heart were like boulders, rocks falling on the immaculate floor,
rattling and cracking in that deep silence.
He wanted to weep,
because he could not
be silent enough inside.
He made an effort again and attended to the laying of the incense and again to the fire.
He then lay prostrate before the altar.
He felt silence entering him at last
like a gift not earned,
the rattling, falling stones in him swept away by another's power;
he no longer noticed the jewels of the ephod pressing against his chest;
the sounds of the singing ceased,
and he lay for a minute in the silence,
the silence of the Ancient of Days.
He lifted his head
and immediately put it down again.
This was not in the rubrics and the books.
The silence became too heavy, beyond him,
the fire and lamps too strong.
He tried not to see the color
that was more like the color of sunrise,
like the sun peeking, rippling through tree branches,
or the light on the water,
dancing.
"Zechariah. Do not be afraid. Your prayer has been answered..."
"How can I be sure of this?" He had thrown it, like a rock, from the center of his heart.
The light contracted, went still: "I am Gabriel...you shall be silent."
Zechariah stumbled out of the Holy of Holies,
and as he entered the outer courtyard,
He saw their frightened faces,
their fervent faces,
their waiting,
ever waiting,
but he could not give the benediction.
His shame also made his tongue lay useless,
before the great mystery which grew inside Elizabeth.
Slowly, as the months went on,
slowly as he could only hear and see,
within him embers of humility were lit by the daily evidence
of an old woman swelling with child, like a ship long docked, stretching and groaning
against the fullness of a wind on an unexpected sail.
As he watched her bloom again,
his son growing strong inside her gave him the courage
to speak the language of the heart:
"Our prayers have been answered."
He began, in the voiceless days, to see the shame of childlessness
was the impotence of Israel;
that he had been, in his barrenness, as the priest chosen by lot,
the one God had chosen from before time,
in his weakness, to be Israel.
And the silence grew white-hot, deep in the recesses of his house.
Oh Israel, hard like the smooth, stone floor which his priest-feet had passed over;
but now God was coming, coming to walk over those brittle stones in bare, human feet,
but first, His herald must come
to clear the rubble.
Zechariah began to crack.
The new fire in his heart, the swelling sound of a burgeoning blaze, poured forth:
"His name is John."
