ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Sarah Stockton, MA, taught at the University of San Francisco for several years while also working as a freelance writer and editor and raising two kids. A trained spiritual director, Sarah now lives in the rural Pacific Northwest with her husband, contends with a chronic illness, and writes poems.
Sarah’s more recent poems have appeared in The Shallow Ends, Rise Up Review, Empty Mirror, and Crab Creek Review, among others. She has a chapbook in progress and another out on submission.
What I Have Done, and What I have Failed to Do
A young man collapsed inside himself, jittery, hoodie pulled down, body
folded into the corner of the pew like a broken beach chair
abandoned in the shallows. It came to me then, I will never be more than I am right now
so I sat down next to him, smiling at the elderly women around us, carefully
keeping my hands where he could see them, fingers open in my lap, steady breathing
ready to receive a whispered confession but annoyed at the way he scrounged
in the plastic bag beneath his feet. I was afraid of his cat’s eye marble stare, the bloody
medical tape wrapped too tight around his knuckles and hands, pain swelling
the bruised and burning flesh he pressed to my flesh as we passed the peace.
Let me help you with your suffering, my son, is what I didn’t say. Where I live
blue herons stand about in still water, fly across the uncluttered sky.
I am always glad to witness their grace, their flight, before I turn away.
A church pew can be a too-comfortable perch. This poem attempts to capture a young man’s suffering, the spiritual disruption he caused, and my own heartfelt but ultimately inadequate response. I admit that I long at times for a complacent sort of faith, but that’s not when God shows up.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
