"Holy Ground" - Franciscan Poetry & Prose

Holy Ground

Grackles with eyes of halfed lopes

jabber along the loose coils of barbed wire.

Weeds grow to dizzy angles here

while I call out the friar's names:

Osbelt, Smyth, Hatch, McNammera.

Something calls from the scrub pines

that casts scented shadows from sun-stung

needles. The pine cones mime balmed secrets

that gather meaning from the wind.

At the priory across the road,

shades are pulled to the noon sun

and the refectory is filled with

the clutter sounds of spoons against bowls.

I stand here among these headstones

where the air is as still as a young possum's breath

and the field rocks doze in the drainage culvert,

their backs bleached and dry.

it is late.

The slow sanctus of the Angelus bell

Encircle our small lives.

Come Sit. Listen.

McNammera, Hatch, Smyth, Osbelt.

– by Bro. Didacus R. Wilson, T.O.R.

(© copyright All Rights Reserved Wilson, Richard S.)