She: Poem of the Month

For more poems on spiritual topics, serious and light, please visit the Spring 2008 issue of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose

Some other spiritual poems by Kate:

Self as a Refuge

What Pervades

Earthly Use

Contemplative Observances

Poem of the Month
Kate Bernadette Benedict

She

The Shekhinah...is supposed to be everywhere, and it is exile that carries it everywhere.—Elie Wiesel

On the banks of the Ob, at the source of the Boyne,
in a curtain of reeds, she wanders.

She raises a lantern: its flame is extinguished.
For a moment she stops. She wanders.

No clatter of pebbles beneath her sandals.
Where night jasmine opens, she wanders.

Heat lightning flashes her dark silhouette.
Through sandstorm, in snowfall, she wanders.

She stops. She weeps. She swivels her neck.
She pulls at her garment. She wanders.

In fog, in mirage, in a forest of cloud,
in vapor of marshes she wanders.

Night is her element, exile her destiny.
Everywhere, nowhere, she wanders.

Ever since, beyond, unto, always, until, she wanders.

Originally published in The Buckeye