Three Poems by Johanna Caton, O.S.B.

Milk and Honey

Steamy as whistling kettles, early
as April, Virginia’s heat, searing
and shimmering, beats the bravest:

kids in school buckled, fainting. 
But later, honeysuckle’s smoke
of near-mystical incense

atoned – even a child can scent
redemption. Evenings, I’d skip
down to the honeysuckle fence

to breathe its heat-freed nard,
pick flowers, and, with very tips
of dirty fingers, work a pin-head

bead of nectar up, just so,
from a flower’s base, to suckle
heaven – always heaven.

So many decades and seas
between me and that child,
but warm, honey-air and fresh

sap, smaller than a sip, linger –
a tiny communion,
tiny communion.

A Wedding Picture

Still wearing flip-flops but clothed in chiffon, the bride’s mother scurries to her daughter’s room for the bridal enrobing.  Mother fastens the pale wedding gown, smoothing it down from above, liquid as love. “Now!” the early photographer cries as the shutter plucks this moment like a note from their minuet of rapture and the real: before high heels, before guests’ arrival, before the vows and the drenching laughter and after, long after what Mother still feels: the tiny body once wrapped in her own. Now it is wrapped in folds of lace and satin. She still holds the sound of her heart’s yearning toll for the little nest so snug below, still feels the nestling, warm in her arms when newly born: but this second birth cuts wilder than the first as the lark-flight rips day into shreds of light. Now look: the shutter performs its duty to the real; see: two women standing, one in flip-flops. Four hands are gripped, their fingers entwined, an embrace of hands that feel the grace the picture suspends in an endless beat of music that circles slowly and says: This is my body and its long, long tale of love.

Why Shouldn’t the Blessed Mother—

why shouldn’t she slip between worlds,
still as moons, or small blooms, or curled
wisps of babies’ hair, and appear, pearl

in the closed oyster of the night, seated
at the foot of my bed? I was five, needed
her warm, streaming love. Not a dream,

she drew me, child scared in dark rooms.
She made me fearless for a moment, at home
with her, like a little seed in her soft loam. 

Why shouldn’t I hear her love, music-dear,
and return it as in a dance—she was so clear,
I had to cry, “Oh!” and try to hold her there.

But she left me then—my arms held, clasped
air. Come morning, I tried to tell, but lacked
words for gift and grief, so kept it: wrapped

Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun. She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, Amethyst Review, and other venues, both online and print.  

Image: Jessica Demaree, Honeysuckle Porch (Unsplash)