Collegeville

This place haunts me with memories
of paths not taken.
Black-robed monks
slide into their stalls,
rekindle groggy wakings
in St. Gregory’s darkness,
singing Lauds, near slumber,
hooded head nodding,
countering the rhythm of the Psalms,
that post-grad summer
feeling out a cloistered life.

Catholic symbols stipple the walls,
scatter the landscape,
conjure up times at Catholic Worker farms,
and St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality,
bunkered down in Hells Kitchen,
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day
still alive, filling
every corner.

The massive concrete church
rouses memories of Taize—
candles, prayer stools, silence,
songs filling the sanctuary
perched atop that gentle ridge,
blessing Burgundy’s fields.

All those years of seeking,
searching for spiritual community,
living together in witness
to a different way than the world offers,
return to me here.
But oh how different my life has been.

Wooded trails, loon calls,
white pines, lillypadded lakes
call me back.
Ponderings of
unrequited possibilities
loosen their grip as I begin
what I’ve come for, to write.

I start with this poem, then another,
revising more, reshaping lines
in response to a mentor’s
honesty and respect.
Finding a fellowship of writers,
I open out, as I follow
the map’s unfoldings,
revealing new paths,
new contours, new colors,
here, in this place, now.

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