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POETRY
Yahwehs Other Shoe
Abraham bowed to the ground, and he laughed to
himself. Is a child to be born to a man one hundred years old?
-- Genesis 17:17
Really now, its ridiculous,
absurd. Funerals have been planned, texts chosen, plots selected, graves
dug, lean nephews eager at the door.
At a hundred, palsied of hand,
I should spurt my seed with vigor so the servants at the well can
jest of a legendary goat.
They snicker as they feed the camels,
unspooled laughter at the tent, limp around its pole, billowing huge
with a gust of wind.
They point fingers at Sara, ninety, fruitful as
a Negeb rock, like a pregnant grandmother, nine months gone,
backaches,
morning sickness, and a hunger for Arabian figs not
found in Mamre. So you will have your little joke on us.
We
giggled, too. Sara lied to your abrupt face at soup. Oh, you kept your
little promise, faithful to the last generation.
All of this, I know,
is symbolic of some vast cosmic intent, some system of opaque
meanings about locating my existence in your sovereignty.
Just so.
But it is not enough. You build your witticism into little Isaacs
name, Yahweh smiles. Indeed.
So I pasture my flocks in
the valley where Persian Reeds and Lemon Grass grow tall, waiting for
Yahwehs other shoe to fall.
When God jokes, expect a
hook.
-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell Collegeville, Minn.
Fowl Fidelity at 5 a.m.
(At a Rural Retreat)
I woke to the roosters crow -- a task given long
ago to his ancestral clay -- and wondered: though hell never
renege on his faithful din (being untouched by original sin) does he
ever, in some rooster way, long for a rainy day so that he can sleep
in?
-- Sr. Irene Zimmerman, OSF Milwaukee
Sister Water
Mountain streams thunder into lakes and reservoirs;
melts hurtle down the slopes in silver veins, spangling pastures with
gentians and alpenrose. This is the longed for season when driving up
into the green spaciousness and glistening rocks is also a tumbling down,
when stones are thatched with miniature blooms. Water regenerates the
earth of ourselves -- sister water -- St. Francis called it -- a
roaring in the ears, the snowbanks giving way, carved from within, body
against body rinsed in their own light.
-- Marguerite Bouvard Wellesley, Mass.
Living
There is a small flame inside me.
(Gods
hands are cupped around it.)
-- Mary Vineyard Lubec, Maine
Picture Postcard: Roscommon Steelyard
There, on the outside wall of a shed the Sacred Heart
of Jesus, all faded and pale. He looks out of a kelly-green box
its
open door empty of glass that protected the image from rain, insects and
wind of his own creation.
He is Lord of the steelyard, its
scrap metal of no use to anyone but him who raises up from the heap what
is discarded.
He is able despite his attachment to wall, to cross, to
tabernacle, to step out from those frames that would confine and walk
among his people receiving their sins.
-- Judith Robbins Whitefield,Maine
National Catholic Reporter, July 27,
2001
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