Featured Poet Series: Barbara Crooker
We are launching a new series this spring with poets whose work we love and want to feature! Our next poet is Barbara Crooker, whose work is deeply inspired by paying attention to how God whispers in the world. You can hear Barbara reading her poem “Sanctus” below and read more about the connections she makes […]
Requiem for Myself ~ Poem Video: A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Requiem for Myself When I die plant a pinwheel in an open field where winter’s wind and rain march forcefully across in battalions, and you can stumble out there to meet me one late afternoon when you feel the world must surely be ending. You, soaked from tears and storms, kinship with dark sky. Me, […]
Easter Blessings + Take My Hand (new poetry video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Take My Hand Please don’t plant me neat rows of rosebushes and tulips at attention, no manicured gardens or crystal vases of cut stems. Instead, take my hand, lead me onto rain-softened grass which undulates like a boat on a summer lake, lie down with me in a quilt of sunlight and shadows among yellow […]
Vespers (New Poetry Video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Vespers The sun slides down the gap between houses its amber reach crosses the grass toward me, shadow of the elder tree has grown long and I remember under the mulberry spectacle of sky how everything I love must end: this cup of tea with steam ascending, the dog curled right against me, your warm […]
The Feast of St. Patrick and the Spring Equinox ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Holy Mountain* I want to climb the holy mountain ascend over weight of stone and force of gravity, follow the rise of a wide and cracked earth toward eternal sky, measured steps across the sharp path, rest often to catch my heavy breath. I want to hear the silence of stone and stars, lie back […]
Connemara Illuminated (new poetry video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Connemara Illuminated A poem is being scribed this morning across the thick brown bog and over the gashed granite folds of mountain, written in spires of gold descending from the wide bowl of sky across the breathing heather. You have to pause to read it, long enough to hear beneath the relentless moan of wind […]
St. Teresa’s Ecstasy (new poem video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, To continue celebrating the upcoming release of my poetry collection Dreaming of Stones, I have another poem video for you this week. This poem, titled St. Teresa’s Ecstasy, was inspired by the statue created by Bernini which depicts a moment she describes in her autobiography of mystical communion. The poem […]