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POETRY
Chapel Limbo
My friend unlocks the heavy wooden door,
A shaft of
light pierces the desolate dark,
A puff of air freshens musty silence.
A
chapel, French style, bulky wooden pews
With broad unpadded kneelers.
Now no Kyries for daily Mass -- only
Dust and boarded up stained glass
windows.
Altar barren, Gregorian chant mute.
I bow my head, sorry I had
come.
We walk on the tile floor, footprints in dust.
Nuns’
frenchy narrow stalls line the walls.
The marble floor apse is missing the
rail,
The brass communion rail with fleur-de-lis.
Nuns chant of Compline
in ethereal tones
Now fades and blends with angel choirs.
I step boldly
into the sacristy
Where priests vested in fiddleback chasubles
Off limits
to us student girls.
Free to roam as if backstage at the Met
On a dim
day after the last curtain
My school days seem that remote, the school
leveled
To a rolling park where lusty cheers
From soccer fields invade
the reverence
Of the brownstone place rooted in holiness.
The vandals
come after dark.
A fire here, graffiti there, hip-high weeds
Cry out for
the Irish gardeners.
The chapel looms, like the Mariner’s ship.
Its
vaulted ceiling an upturned hull.
A ghostly presence in a corner of the
park
Outside, inside, an unresponsive limbo.
Where lived the grandeur and
splendor
Of the old school’s heart.
-- Cecelia Johnson
Philadelphia
The Lepers Who Let Us Embrace Them
Youthful, healthy, oozing joy,
Francis gets the
credit.
Yet what of one who watched
him coming, dreading
charity?
The first numbness in his hand
had been the signal; then
the
flaking skin; now the stink of
decay: a body rotting from
within.
It was enough: watching fingers,
toes, limbs left behind like
careless
trash. He did not need the wealthy
boy, did not want to be a
symbol.
Which one is named saint? One rose
beyond hostility and shame
to grace.
Centuries owe the leper thanks; he,
compassionate, accepted
Francis’ kiss.
-- Kathy Coffey
Denver
Our Lady of the Pines Retreat
Center
Dawns and dusks are dangerous
for flowers
here.
Daisies, freshly bloomed,
barely stretched out infant
petals
when snap! -- off with their heads!
And the stems
like green
spaghetti
stand witness to another heist
of the marauding
deer.
Retreatants love their sightings
of a
“Bambi.”
Sister Rose, though,
trying to trink the
grounds
with colorful blooms for Jubilee Day,
is not so
thrilled.
She’s researched solutions
but coyote urine is
scarce.
So deer continue to hide
in nearby groves
and spy on her
botanical whimsies.
Then
when she goes to night prayer,
they emerge
brazenly
and tiptoe with ballerina grace
across the grounds
to munch
on saplings.
Or what might have been
prize-winning roses.
-- Sr. Patricia Schnapp, RSM
Adrian, Mich.
The Color of Underground Seas
Where it surfaces, up from the
aquifer’s
Sunlessness, bubbled in wellheads that plumb
The depths,
their water is mined clear
As liquefied diamonds, faceted by the
sprinklers
In any system of pivots spinning false rainbows
Over the corn.
The true rainbows arch
Underground, colors solidly fixed in a
crouch
Beneath rock ceilings, in narrow layers of dark,
Where rainbow
rivers run into rainbow caves,
And the light is the surface water
relayed
Through strata of amethyst, sapphire, and jade.
-- Nancy G. Westerfield
Kearney, Neb.
Poems should be previously unpublished and limited to about 50
lines and preferably typed. 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. Please include your street
address, city, state, zip and daytime telephone number. NCR offers a
small payment for poems we publish, so please include your Social Security
number.
National Catholic Reporter, October 18,
2002
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