They Really Are Just Things
Socks with holes.
An address book
with water spots as
their bookmark.
Cards upon cards, of every occasion
you could ever think of
but we won't
use the stanzas to reminisce.
Broken goggles.
A plastic container worn around the
neck for waterpark endeavors.
A St. Christopher medal now worn
around the neck of the one
that found it stuck
under a watch won from
a former employer.
A matchbook to a
no longer existing supper club.
Six highlighters and
three referee whistles.
A check someone didn't sign.
Keys to a demolished car.
A prayer book,
and some yarn.
Christoforos ("Christ-bearer") is the patron saint of travelers, and small images of him are often worn around the neck, on a bracelet, carried in a pocket, or placed in vehicles by Christians. Legends about him 1st appeared in Greece in the 6th century and spread to France by the 9th. Bishop Walther von Speyer popularized him in the 11th century, portraying him as a barking, cannabalistic, dog-headed giant in the land of the Chananeans who met the Christ child, regretted his former behavior, received baptism, and was given a human appearance. In other accounts he was a giant Canaanite, 5 cubits (7.5 ft, 2.3 m) tall named Offerus, Offro, Adokimus, or Reprobus, the son of a pagan king. (His common dog-headed iconography may be the result of a Byzantine misinterpretation of the Latin term Cananeus [Canaanite] as "canineus" [canine]). After converting to Christianity he dedicated himself to helping people cross a dangerous river. Eventually a child child asked him for assistance, but during the crossing the river became swollen and the child became so heavy that Christopher was barely able to reach the other shore. He told the boy, "You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were," to which the child replied, "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." Christopher was either beheaded by the "king of Lycia" during the reign of a Roman emperor (either Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius Augustus [249–251] or Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximinus Daia Augustus [308–313]). In yet another version of his life, he was Reprebus, Rebrebus or Reprobus, a Marmaricae (Berber) warrior in Cyrenaica, in north Africa, in the time of Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus [284-305], and was captured in combat before his conversion. According to the Ango-Saxon "Nowell Codex Life of Saint Christopher" his tormentor was Dagnus of Samos, who had him beaten, immolated (but "King Dagnus saw the holy Christopher standing amid the fire and he saw that his face was that of roses in bloom"), and shot at by bowmen "from the first hour of day until evening. The king then believed that all of those arrows were affixed in Christopher’s body-home -- but not even one touched him.... two points from the arrows shot into the king’s eyes, and he was blinded by them." Before his execution Christopher prayed that "in whichever place that any part of my corpse may be there may be no famine or the terror of fire. And if there might be sick men near there, and they come to your people at that holy temple and they pray there to you from their whole heart and by your names they cry out in my name, heal them from the lord wheresoever infirmity restrains them.” Two days later, as Christopher had suggested, "Dagnus took his portion of this earth where the martyr of Christ had been suffering with a little of the blood and mixed them together and set it upon his eyes. And he spoke: 'In the name of Christopher’s God, I judge this,' and swiftly at that same moment his eyes were unclosed and he took up sight."
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