speak each other’s language.
Noised about the city, his promise
fulfilled this hour of sacred prayer.
Sext
The Hour Christ Died
Midday, the sext hour, mealtime
for all the empty eyes waiting
in the long soup lines at St. Meinrad’s.
They are Christ suffering—
the homeless, the betrayed, and
the abandoned; children with distended stomachs
wounded by hunger and thirst;
seniors crucified on a fixed income.
They have not read Benedict’s Rule
on providing hospitality
or giving guests a pound weight of bread,
and pilgrims a hemina of wine.
But they know the black monks
will fill them with all good things:
red jello bouncing like a pounding heart;
meatloaf in thick brown gravy;
mashed potatoes puffy as cumulus clouds in April.
The sun is at its fullest
as they leave; the hour Christ died.
But as they walk out, one
by one, the monks bless each
with a hyssop branch,
dipped in holy water.
Vespers
The Delta Between Sunset and Dark
At this holy hour, the Delta hinges
between the splendor of sunset
and the covetous reach of dark.
Cotton fields dress in Easter white—
brides processing down aisles,
ready to light their lamps, waiting
for the groom.
A cream-draped lotus offers
enticement to the evening air,
a bouquet of incense.
A young girl tells her cousin
about the infinite joy
she carries in her rounding womb.
Lilies drift across the flat, long land
into their silhouettes.
At nightfall the soft
side of sorrow seeps in—
a mother stands alone
beside the body of her lynched son
keening, the melody of grief
picked up by the moanful refrain
of the blues from the clapboard church
across the road.
Through the stained glass windows
the candles look like sunsets.
Compline
The Day is Done
The convent has silenced the sky—
no bell clangs or calls
in this dark season; the day is done;
neither bunting nor jay takes wing;
night masks the earth’s green splendor
in mists and mazes.
Before the dim chapel lamp
the sisters beg for light to keep watch over
their thoughts and dreams,
and entreat angels to make rounds
evicting sin-sated whisperers
and phantoms in harlequin disguise.
In their cells, each sister undresses
her conscience, yet again
asking forgiveness for slipping
into vanity or being shackled in shame,
thieves of the day’s glory,
and then wills her soul to God
in scapular Latin, cloistered in her bed
(in manus tuas), just before she reaches
the shelter of feathers and wings.
part 2
In This Place of Stability
Vow to be part of this holy place
so it can be part of you.
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