After Emily Dickinson
Your Deeds, dear Sir, no one can map
With Arithmetic rule—
Yet Dogmatists may call me Quack
For claiming–like a Fool—
To have beheld the Infinite
Whose Longitudes sublime
Marked out one day the Laundromat
That rid my clothes of grime—
Yet–truly–all who washed that day
Were Radiant–were One—
The sweetest of all Songs we sang—
Even as dryers spun–
And Glory fringed each sock and blouse—
I folded, Glory-dazed—
I walked my Glory home—I was
Half stupefied—joy-crazed—
For though the Distance was not great—
Only a mile I trod—
For—Fools—it circumnavigates
The Latitudes of God.
A Pentecost first appeared in Agnellus Mirror’s “Daily Reflections” blog.
Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun from Minster Abbey in Kent, England. Born in Virginia, she lived in the United States until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England. She writes poetry as a means of understanding the work of God in her life, whose purposes and presence can be elusive until viewed through the more accommodating lens of art and poetry. Her poetry has appeared on Agnellus Mirror, in the ‘Daily Reflections’ blog and The Christian Century.