For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

In July of 1995, before I got married, I spent six weeks on a  retreat at Mt. Saviour Monastery above Elmira, N.Y. where a handful of other young men and I lived with the Benedictine monks there. While there, I ended up writing a couple of poems. This is one of them when I went on a solo retreat in a hermitage in the woods on the property.

Discernment

	--- at Mount Saviour Monastery, July 1995

Squawk from the laurel breaks my psalm-chant.
Expecting a raven, I cross the threshold
of contemplation only to find the unexpected
staring me down just off the four-wheel path.
He paces around the hermitage like the hunter
that he is, telling me to leave him to his prey,
probably the wild turkey clan that hobbled by
earlier. So a fellow brother later tells me.
I do not know that now, think this creature
some manifestation of evil come to interrupt
my prayer. I rebuke him, rattling my beads
at him, warding off his wiles, his deceitful
beauty. Yet he remains, crying, circling me,
vigilant in his torment, testing my motives
for invading his territory, my will to stay.
Later that night I imagine his den underneath
my cot, him scratching at my floorboards.
For now I return to my lectio, his forlorn cry
just a hue of the creation, the eternal now
like temptation, suffering, death. Inescapable.

The above poem is best read in desktop or landscape on your browser of choice.

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “If My Body Is Dying, Tell Me You Love Me” by Jacqueline Chang on The Academy of American Poets website. Also they have links to each poem being read, usually by the poet if still alive.