Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category

September Speaks

September 14, 2009

If conscience is the voice of God in the soul, then Creation is Him singing.

Watch, wait, look long and look deep. Creation is dying again. Listen to Her wisdom.
Watch, wait, look long and look deep. See this mournful train.
September sets the first steps of Her Via Dolorosa…. Creation’s road to Calvary.
Watch, wait, look long and look deep. September speaks a dying wish. To Her children in their maddening rush, in their race over roads of stone and in their cages of glass and steel… Listen. Watch. Be still.

For what happens to me, She whispers, must happen to you.
September speaks in muted tones, in dew-wet droplets on fragile webs, shining like jewels. In the burnt edges of leaves in their final hours, in the cold breath over corn past their ripening. Listen, September speaks.
All things pass, all things change, all things die. And those that give their life away to the summons of September, will be born again.

I Love This Nun

August 4, 2009

I’m sure you’ve had times in your life when you stumbled onto something great, something refreshing, amazing, ennobling, uplifting; something even today you keep going back to for solace or inspiration…. and you don’t even remember how you found it in the first place.
One of those treasures for me is Alba’s Pizza in Browns Mills, NJ. Just kidding. It’s the poems of Jessica Powers, aka Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit. Give yourself a coffee break and soak your weary soul in this one. This is what it’s all about! This is why we are here, why we exist! Our souls like mirrors are made to reflect the One, the Only, the Love that shaped the universe. Here’s my objective for the day…. reflection, reflection, reflection…. Enjoy…

The Pool of God

There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul

that belonged to the Virgin –

no word, no thought, no image, no intent.

She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting

God, only God.


She held His burnished day; she held His night

of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.

God was her sky and she who mirrored Him

became His firmament.



When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her

my spirit is enisled in her repose.

And when I gaze into her selfless depths

an anguish in me grows

to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.


I pray to hollow out my earth and be 

filled with these waters of transparency.

I think that one could die of this desire,

seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.


Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,

water that lost the semblances of water

and was a sky like God.

– Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers)

______________________________
The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE Washington, DC 20002-1199