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POETRY
Winter
Last night more snow fell And it falls now on the
unjust, And the just, and the metal flower holder I took from the
trash and painted, And on the railings, and the wings of birds,
Cardinals, and the lawnmowers You were going to fix and didnt,
And the sidewalk, and the mailbox, And Marys outstretched
hands. The snow falls down And the roses at her feet lie buried And
one more thing, you said, before you left, It is winter in heaven, and
winter on earth. They are the same, for once.
-- Ann Cramer Barrington, Ill.
Child, Implanted
Her hearing implant is in place now, Just this
week. Jan the mother Of the child born deaf, reaches down To lift
the proud accomplishment To viewing level. Wide-eyed and apprehensive,
Hands extended more as shield than greeting, Child Amanda needs excuses:
What she hears Is only noises still, to her, Jan says,
And shes confused, after all that silence. I say her name
Amanda, exploding the m With its rush of air against her face,
And she recoils. Out of a blessed Eden Free of words, her innocence has
been Implanted with our fearful power of talk; Now she will control the
animals, with us Control each other, answer back to God By this
evening, in his Eden walk.
-- Nancy G. Westerfield Kearney, Neb.
On the Feast of St. Brigid
I sing the song my mother sang, but in a different
key. She was Finnish through and through. I am too, but Celtically
because of my father whose family came from Clare in the bleak West of
burning peat, the peaks of Connemara visible from the Isle of
Innishmore, where one afternoon in late August, in open air on the rising
road to the ring fort I eavesdropped a geography lesson from father to
son: You see there the Twelve Bens, the peaks of Connemara
So thats what they are. I followed his finger to the swells of hills
across the water where bloom a thousand rocks and a thousand sheep
where legend stoops to drink at the waters edge the brine
preserving the inner organs of lines worth passing from father to son.
I remember the time, the father began, and his son looked up at him with an
opened eye.
-- Judith Robbins Whitefield, Maine
Estelli, Nicaragua
We walked off our air-conditioned tour bus to
witness a funeral procession. The children clung to their parents who
stared back at us as if to say: Norte Americano, what the fuck are you
doing here? Members of our group snapped pictures of the coffin,
a sixteen-year-old man killed in battle with bullets wrapped in
American tax dollars. That afternoon a city councilman invited us
into his office. His fingers tapped anxiously upon the desk. He
recalled Somozas troops invading Estelli in the spring of
1979 with U.S. built tanks. The people of Estelli with their bare
hands dug tunnels under the walls of houses to pass guns, food and
water. Leading us a tour of the bullet riddled city hall and trying to
control his voice he said: This is where my nephew died. In
the basement of a small church a young nun shared a silent prayer
with our group and proclaimed: It is the priests and sisters
who are called to true teachings of Christ who followed the
Sandinistas in the revolution. The Pope and the United States will
never stop us. That night in a dream I saw a banquet table
where the Blessed Mother sat with the people of Estelli. A Contra
guerrilla, his face changing to mine, walked up and tossed a grenade. I
threw myself to the floor. I heard the Virgin Mary scream.
-- Thomas B. Greving Alexandria, Va.
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1999 in POETRY
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Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO
64111-1203. Or via e-mail to poetry@natcath.org or fax (816) 968-2280.
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National Catholic Reporter, March 17,
2000
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