Poetry
Sally Read is poet in residence of the Hermitage. More information can be found about her at the Contact page.
The Quickening
Mary’s pregnancy at 16 weeks
If prayer is a bare tree,
clod-bound,
yet reaching up with jagged
branches to the boundless
pasture of sky,
think of her that day
his bare weight
reached the tipping point
and she could feel him beat
against the thickening
of her flesh,
fleeting as a silver-fish;
there-and-gone
as a firefly in the dusk.
It’s a feeling as scarce
as your eyelash against
your cheek, the lightest spasm
of the eyelid
and she may have wondered
if it was so;
but there it was again.
That day, Christ in utero
found the softest
boundaries of the world,
and she knew,
in the newest sense,
the gravity-bound God
that swam; the first touch
of the divine to us.
That flickering in her womb,
was like buds on the stark branches
of our prayer;
in what seemed unending
silence: God’s lips.
Three Hares
In the still, blue snow the hare’s eye is steady as God’s,
and dark. His veined ear is tuned
to the anticipation of sound,
and the hermitage’s silence;
its one light burning. Stripped trees;
the cold smell of nothing—and then! from nowhere,
two more hares complete the steady gaze
of a Trinity. Their fur is white now,
changed, as though this freeze brought on grief
and they yielded to its will with agility.
Their ears are not shells shaped for noise,
but bodies offered up to the moment:
sensitive, secret, stung.
We pray our souls are so Christ-like:
nakedly attending; and that we may absorb,
as these hares do the morning,
the great breath of the Word.
On the Inauguration of the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs 8th October 2010
No one can see the iodine split
from broken waves,
and sucked into the straits
of your lungs. Indeed, high
on your hillside, the sea
has the sheer fabric
of another earth,
and air’s so still you almost know
its interstices—
like honeycomb,
or the wordless edges
around thought.
Listen: a dropped pin would sing,
and does.
A mouse twitters through the garden.
But they are only here to aver
stillness, as God
avers Himself in vacancy.
Listen: the air’s agape with prayer
and song, the tasks
of knowing—
when nothing is left to be taken
or plundered
but the pure pipes of air
yielding notes;
but the narrow veins of air
birthing, in time,
your homeland,
the inexpressible bodies
of your angels.
copyright Sally Read 2016: If you wish to use this material please contact The Asketerion for permission