Parishioner Carrie Kahler taught a class at Saint Mark's a few years ago on ekphrastic poetry, focusing especially on Saint Mark's own collection of icons. Three poems she wrote as a result of that class were subsequently published in the literary journal Image, issue No. 99. (You can view them on Image's website here, here, and here.) She has graciously offered to share them here. 

After Rublev’s Trinity

Each face turned toward
a face at table leaving
always a space for

one more. An open
door to run through when someone
can’t quite make it home

on their own. Though the
wings work, humans haven’t got
them, and it’s hard to

converse from heights so,
in one hand a staff to lean
on. The other hand
ever reaches down.

After Prokhorova’s Saint Mark

There is no shadow
of turning here but there are
spaces for the dark.

Neither does the point
vanish—receding toward
a horizon of

agreement pinned to
dancing angels, instead gold
instead several

visions at once see
desk with sharp quills curved to light
like the mind on the
feet that bear good news

After The Anastasis

who’s to say here what
is not when the hand firmly
grips the bird-light wrist

the face facing Eve—
her son’s as much as Mary’s—
furrowed long and lined

on her left Adam’s
cloak billows back in the blast
of blue air He brings

the deep blue behind
Him an almond of truth that
is, heaven that is

how we grasp after
holiness when gold leaf is
too dull we go dark

witnesses crowd each
other’s ears and each gestures
and each gesture sends

your glance heavenward
you stand just beyond the first
parents just this side

of death’s doors waiting
for the pull to light waiting
to leave the late night