GOING TO CONFESSION

Poem for Today - Wednesday - October 1, 2014

LEONARD REFUSES TO ATONE

The moon comes up, a white cow

grazing on limbo.

Today in the confessional I yelled,

Father, I am the deaf one, absolve me

in a voice I can hear.

But as usual, he mumbled in the curtain

and the saints cast their eyes

past me, into the cold space of the loft

when I knelt at their feet.

What sins have I done

that you should forsake me?

Again, I asked loudly.

The saints are far deafer than I.

Their ears, curls of plaster,

have grown closed from listening

to the organ's unceasing low sobs.

I sit where the moon rides up,

swollen and tender,

the beast of my burdens. Her back is broad

enough to carry my penance and yours.

When she moans, the whole sky

falls open.

My weight has done this,

My life an act of contrition

tor the sins of a whole town.

But now, when I let the weight fall,

she arches, a slender thing

shot from a quiver.

Oh white deer hunted into a cloud,

I was your child, now I leap down,

relaxed into purpose,

my body cleaves through the air like a star.

Make your wishes, small children.

You others, make vows,

quickly, before I snuff myself out

and become the dark thing

that walks among you,

pure, deaf, and full

of my own ingenious sins.

© Louise Erdrich, pages 229-230
in Upholding Mystery,

An Anthology of Contemporary

Christian Poetry, Edited by

David Impastato,

Oxford University Press,

New York, Oxford, 1997

Picture on top: Confessionals
in Santiago de Compostella
in Spain - which we just  visited
last Tuesday, September 30, 2014.