You Teach Me Light: Slightly Dangerous Poems
By Melaney Poli and Jeanie Tomasko
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About this ebook
For ease of use, each poem is equipped with useful punctuation marks and extra white space. Handle with care. You may be stuck with them.
Melaney Poli
Melaney Poli is an artist and writer, and a nun of the Order of Julian of Norwich.
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You Teach Me Light - Melaney Poli
Thank you for small beginnings
for the edge of the sheet tucked back
the pillowcase pulled on, thank you
for the one corner swept, the linen
basket filled, for one box emptied,
one letter begun, for one spoon washed,
one verse of a poem written down,
for one shoe placed
neatly by another, the needle threaded,
the first page read, thank you, thank you,
thank you
the monk who wrote himself to death
In this world one collects things, you see,
and to some certain falls the thankless chore
of garnering words, stringing them one
upon another, and if you’re auspicious,
relinquishing them at a profit (it’s known
as selling one’s soul). To be sure,
for the prophets the cost will be higher,
the collection more probing and pitiless;
and depending on the lie of your fears
your words are a net, or a fire:
a snare your readers can catch you in, or your hell
of feeding an insatiable blaze.
And either way it’s a hall of mirrors,
where each beaded word tricks the light,
and no amount of spooling will spell
any certain escape from this maze.
There is a way out of course, and quite
simple: the ring of fire, the breath
of air, and the land beyond guile
and names. You can get there by prayer—
or by letting go of knowing the way,
both are the same: a kind of death
to what was before, with a smile
that knows there is nothing to say.
On missing my tour of the St John’s Bible, Collegeville, Minnesota
Of course it sucks. I didn’t come a thousand miles and bucks
to get disappointed this much. I expected crême brulée, got
a mouthful of baking powder. Scrubbed out my expectations.
Some mistake.
I like to think art has an answer to everything; it’s an artist’s sin.
Maybe I just wanted to get smashed on beauty, stoned on lovely
adjectives. Or maybe the hope that beholding will make me
able to see.
Should I say (I who have learned, something) God you are my
best illumination, it’s by your being that I see? Should I rather say
I now go out and see people like illuminations, walking? Perhaps
I don’t know my power
or perhaps I don’t desire. And I know nothing would ever be
enough, and yet I will go on craving. I have an artist’s most
irrational faith in what can be made from what seems to be
nothing. See,
I could say Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker, or
that it brings me to my senses, or strips me of illusion, or
that there is every possibility that what I don’t see can still
illuminate me.
Fable
Let me touch one soul by my art, he said. I have a