Poetry
Sally Read is poet in residence of the Hermitage. Her new collection "Dawn of this Hunger" is forthcoming from Angelico Press and Second Spring. Check back for more poems. Further information can be found about Sally at the Contact page.
Night Prayer
Don’t think the night’s all deadness—there are wells
of light and dark, and many kinds of silence. Tonight
the snow breathes light and three large hares, white
on white, are munching left-out carrots, lolloping trails
of nothing in a silky, new-ink silence. It’s the silence
of how your hair would sound when it rises on your scalp.
It wakes the hermit; that and the beating heart of Christ
that pushes through the night like a boat through
brackish waters. There is no chapel-bell, no tramping march
of monks. Just one mind in the wooden room, apiece
with the fresh-ink hush. Thoughts are indivisible
from prayer; speech inseparable from silence and his heart
which echoes endlessly with what God spoke. He rises.
The snow-light seethes around him, like insomnia or love.
copyright Sally Read 2016: If you wish to use this material please contact The Asketerion for permission