This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is an ekphrastic by Johanna Caton, O.S.B., based on a painting, Pairs Kiss, by Rev. Stephen Horton, O.S.B.
Still life of pears in ardent pear de deux—
they share their skin—and more: they merge and dance:
they’re one: a perfect love, or sweet adieu—
a yearning, metaphysical romance.
And thus, all things—why, even those remote
from us, even the microscopic specs,
are waltzing toward communion—merest motes,
too small for us to see, ache to detect
a mate, and with some sort of hidden feet
or Spirit’s wheels, they scoot or sweep or roll
till they, in wild jubilation, meet—
small pieces, incomplete alone, made whole—
swung up in God’s rhapsodic ballet-kiss,
small pieces rapt in pas de deux—like this.
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 or will appear in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Time of Singing Christian Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Christian Century, Amethyst Review and other venues. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee.
Rev. Stephen Horton, O.S.B., is a monk of Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, England.