Convergence

A Poem

"Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in Heaven." 

-- Psalm 119

She died at a younger age than I am now, 
her tail folded and low to the ground -- 
although it did not touch. The ocelli 
seemed less like they refused to see the truth
and more as though they'd simply seen enough. 

The compilation of her feathers, called a book, 
so full of barbs and filoplume, 
had finally been bound and covered, 
ready to be shelved, anthologized. 

Here, in the temple, men were selling colorless doves
whose eyes blinked and flirted in oblivious ignorance. 
There was no music, no angry Son of Man
to chase them from their keep. 
They simply sat, sated by inexhaustible feed. 

I saw her eyes in the face of the Virgin Mother, unbespectacled, 
and, with nothing to read but everything to pray, 
I imagined myself back in Iowa City at St. Mary's
on a Wednesday morning before our class had started, 
and wondered at the words I'd yet to see.  

Cropped close-up of American author Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964) as she smiles outdoors, Georgia, 1961. (Photo by Joseph De Casseres/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images)

¹

1. Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 in Milledgeville, Georgia. She raised peacocks late in life as she suffered lupus, and is the author of two novels and a number of short stories which include the posthumously published collection Everything That Rises Must Converge.