To Julian of Norwich
By Renee Emerson
First published in the Cumberland River Review, this poem appears in the recently released collection Church Ladies.
I suppose it begins with the wish
for a moment
alone; then ash
across a stone floor. You are
entombed with Christ, shut up
in a room with two
windows like eyes set
to the past and future,
like mouths open to receive
mass, forgive the unseen
sins of strangers.
Here we paint rooms white
before we leave them. Outside
one window, a priest; outside
the other, a young woman,
wearing the footpath to dirt. Today
she carries pears, daisies, certain
testimonies. Tomorrow, she carries her mother.
Isn’t this what you prayed for? To burn
with visions, to suffer like God.
Specter, voice from the living grave,
are you more pure there
than the maid on the footpath, begging
penance, shut within
the anchorage
of an earthly body?
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants (Belle Point Press), and the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Church Ladies was published on June 2, 2023 by Fernwood Press. You can purchase a copy here.
