by Kathleen McCoy
For the pinecone strumpets
plumping their wicker bed,
the fireplace stuffed with insulation,
pensive bricks towering in silence
and recombinant Marian images,
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our
Lady of the Sacred Breasts,
for with them come the soaring ceilings,
wooded vistas, partridge, black snake,
toad, bullfrog, monarch, moth, black fly,
wobbling fawn, lumbering moose,
the forest’s flutes trilling on the breeze,
and more than these—the folks
I’ve yearned to speak with—Catherine’s
in from Siena with Merton, John of the Cross,
Meister Eckhart, Simone Weil, Dorothy Day,
Oscar Romero, Dorothy Stang—gratitude
for a procession of luminaries humble enough
to wait upon their appointed shelves
to change another world.