Design and timing, and exquisite
execution of swift dance, and once again
the pracrised mouse escapes. A dark
potato place she knows shapes her
a kind of sanctuary where
thanksgiving prayers
phrased to a narrow life swell now
beyond the interstices of her ribs until
they breathe above the mould
aureoles of inexhaustible sweet grace
to sing her home.
And yet,
whose pleasure’s this? Say
if you can
the cat’s — still, inward,
burning toward his own design
of final seizure and deposit, thus:
loop of a silver paw and on the carpet
four pink feet gathered
tight as rosebuds in a wreathing light.
Then there’s this pile,
all my various utterances,
some of which I’ve decided
are priceless
precisely because now and then
one will really act like an utterance
i.e., when I say it aloud to myself
in my best voice, it resounds
sometimes twice, filling the whole space
even if at the time I can’t remember
ever having said anything like that
to anyone.
Except, of course, God.
Which in my book
goes without saying.
As for the rest of the pile,
that’s priceless, too,
come to think of it,
in ways crying out to be
dealt with directly.
Which I will do.
– Mary Virginia Micka, CSJ
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