Furthermore…

[I am reproducing this which was posted by

Alicia on the Multiply Catholic Friends group site.]

“Is there poetry in the sacrament of confession?

I remember the famous three words of the world’s celebrated mountaineer, Mallory who was at one time many years back asked why he was climbing Mount Everest. He simply retorted: “Because it’s there.”

So then, yes there is poetry in an act of contrition at least, one prosaic but profoundly childlike because it is there.

Now imagine if you will, sitting in the front pew of this chapel remembering what it was like in the days of yore when the nuns with the eyes on the back of their veils that see through the penitent’s soul sifting through the petrified young mind for oversight in the list of sins commited leave you wanting to bolt out of heaven’s door…and then, here you are all grown, recalling with fervor the prayer once commited to memory that now go by way of aging…

It does not matter really if the poetry of it does not rhyme because now you know wisdom comes absolutely with the fear of the Lord. The same fear  that instills reverence for the perfect order of creation…And so I penned this poem that reasons with my humanity and that seeks the peace of that one magnificient Word…

I scoop out the gray mass of words

from the cerebral cortex

where the memory of it

flows red with my blood

and begin to shape the unspoken

into rosaries of transformations

with the cross of brown and wine

that tastes sweet with the bread of life

The crystallized tears pour like hailstorms

in verses with the same words that first

came out of my hand

the same hand that had the lifeless words

filing into single entities

with my knees bending to the gaping floor

and my other hand genuflecting.

The words marched to waiting candles

over melted candles in iron sculpture

I slipped a folded bill in the slot meant for donations

where the words waited to light my fingers

I donated some of them too

knowing there’s an ear someone left inside

an ear that can write better than I can or better than I need to.

I took the rest of the formless and unspoken words

leaving the lighted candles to pray for themselves

and sat down in the oak comfort of the past beyond this door

taking care the words do not know

that I am slowly turning them over to the priest

who waits in the confessional box.”

aliceinthepoetsheartland