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POETRY
A Diversity of Icons
Three rocks my grandson gave me
knock against each
other
in my pocket, a reliquary
each time I finger their ragged
shapes
I wonder, Do I fetishize? when they recall
his deep blue
eyes
better than bones and bits
of hair of saints captured
in
cloth or leather or wood.
-- Judith Robbins
Whitefield, Maine
Shining Through
in this grey dawn
of coffee and prayer,
I sit stone
still
in the rocker,
nothing moves,
eyelids,
poised pen,
the
slippery fold of robe,
all caught in the moment
like a scene
sitting
for its portrait,
a still life framed
by the ticking
clock,
the snapping of firewood,
snoring of the just-fed cat,
even the prism
in the window
hangs vacant,
glass upon glass,
without a hint
of wind or fire
to liven it
then,
a murmur of
purple
ripples through the crystal,
bursts into a scarlet sun
shooting off rays
that pulse and ebb
like the Sacred Heart,
blend and
shift
into gold and peacock blue,
silver and the softest green,
disappearing into each other
like a kaleidoscope
twirled too fast
I reason
it must be the sun,
still curtained behind
the sleeping
grey,
working its alchemy nonetheless
to illuminate the ready
place
and reflect
refracted
glory
--Ethel Pochocki
Brooks, Maine
At Fourteen I Drive the Car
The snow was new upon the northern ground
that March,
a foot of tumbled crisp geometries,
white wisdom laid soft across Dad’s
Ford,
the company car now parked upon the street.
Who of you at
fourteen has not jingled
car keys in a pocket of dirty jeans,
the golden
spurs of the unneeded shave,
the first defiant beer in the pubescent
night?
The key rages the motor into life,
the company car lurches
through the swirl,
a Dakota samurai on a steed of steel,
a street cowbody
for fifty feet of freedom,
shiring off Dad’s fender on the
car
tethered just ahead. Though raised by wolves,
my feral glands were
spayed with fear.
How to tell the father of eight Apaches,
-- eight
jinglers of the mystic keys,
hot for the road and pieces of the world --
how tell him of his fenderless pride -- and live?
“Son, it was your
turn to wreck the car.”
--Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB
Collegeville,
Minn.
Creator
Lord, the spunk, the wit,
to take on water,
as if
so much stone,
and hold it,
hold it to tide. Lord, the crow,
the
haw haw
through the backfield
how did you know
it would
teach my soul
to fly out of its dark hole.
Lord the sheer audacity of
it all,
to make a blossom,
and then, when my mother died,
to let it
fall,
the colors weeping, the choir
singing what must be
sung
we praise thy name
we praise thy name.
--Mary Ann Meade
Conshohocken, Pa.
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, September 20,
2002
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