A Gathering of Larks by Abigail Carroll

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?

I’ve come to love

the new way I bathe. Now all I’ve put on hold

for years—to read and write and simply sit

beneath the oak for hours, watch the wind

extrapolate the leaves—

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 off—not running gear

for sure—but 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 hill—but now,

in order to watch it rise, I’d 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 gray—

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? I’d 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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