A Gathering of Larks by Abigail Carroll
Author:Abigail Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans
Dear Patient Saint,
With my foot in a cast, so much
remains on hold:
fall sweaters piled on the trunk
to be sold to the Essex Clothes Exchange
will simply have to wait, as will
the showerhead,
which I managed to break with the weight
of a pair of dripping wet jeans. Then
there is the closet I have been wanting
to excavate. Thanks
to the neighbors (who delivered milk
and greens, took out my trash, and even
helped me pick my crop of yellow beans),
I am well supplied.
Strange, but I simply have no needs. It seems
life will go on fine whether or not I actually
clean. If the shower is not fixed, so what?
Iâve come to love
the new way I bathe. Now all Iâve put on hold
for yearsâto read and write and simply sit
beneath the oak for hours, watch the wind
extrapolate the leavesâ
has come to count for everything. In sum,
I no longer fear not getting things done.
Contented
Dear Francis,
I have never prayed in a cave,
but once I ran down a highway before dawn
to encounter God in a particular field.
A trooper stopped to ask if I was OK,
said someone had called. My sundress
must have tipped them offânot running gear
for sureâbut I had had no time to think
when the moon was still out and I suddenly woke
compelled to up and go. Where? I did not know
until, walking down the road in the ash-gray
light, I recalled a date I had failed to keep
with the sun on a particular hillâbut now,
in order to watch it rise, Iâd have to run, fly
those two or three miles, my sundress flapping
like a tunic or frock. How would I know
if I had met with God? I could not say.
The field was mist and the sky stone grayâ
it was a clouded start, a break of day with no
clear break save a porthole in the clouds,
a fist of luminous peach, and I stood in my dress
in the cool of the mist and saw with my eyes
the gleam of that orb. Its honey-thick shine,
as it poked through the hole, seemed to stop
for a time, and then slipped by. What chance
that vent would meet the sun, the sun cross by
the small round breach? Was I the only one
to watch this miracle of sorts? Iâd come to greet
the sun, but instead it greeted me. Francis,
was the miracle the way the sun cut past
that perfect cleft, or that I was there to see?
Your fellow pilgrim
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