Where the Pictures Came From
Sister Miriam Pollard, O.C.S.O.
Angels are seldom overheard. But try.
Go listen.
They might be remembering.
They might be whispering about the night
they seeded the sky with embers.
All over the place, the sky took fire.
Astronomers, on various corners of the earth,
reported a shower of burning embers.
This was the night - angels will tell you -
when they clambered over the poles
and raced each other through the tundra,
and swarm a hundred mountain lakes,
shaking the water off like seals,
and kept on going.
They knew they were wanted.
It had to be night, they’ll tell you,
because night is so simple, so all one thing,
even when burnt with embers.
And God had poured himself so flawlessly
into a human heart
that nothing less simple than night
could venture an explanation.
The angels got there, they will tell you.
They ran up the hill, singing a song the color of darkness,
chanting like sea bells
in places of no horizon.
They stood in a circle on the floor of a cave,
and drew pictures on its walls
to entertain the visitors.
And rocked in their song
an infant of one hour’s age,
who was as old as God.
Sister Miriam Pollare is a Cistercian nun at Santa Rita Abbey in Sonoita, Arizona
- Magnificat, p 352-353, Dec 24, 2013