Читать книгу Pilgrim’s Gait - David Craig - Страница 8

Next to a large diocesan bookstore

grab, a decommissioned Loretto;

you couldn’t walk up the tight circular—

car vibrations! (Everything truly good

gets lost: the depth, prayer which sustains.)

Thirty-three steps, a novena’s answer

to bad carpentry!

I try to picture St. Joseph in a saddle.

Eastwood’s cigar, Mexican poncho, a level

in his holster. He bent the wood in water,

just down the road from Georgia O’Keefe’s museum.

I went to see a nearby church with holy dirt:

El Santuario de Chimayo. (Humble locals

were worried about its lean, as we waited—

like one must, it seems, at every site.)

A small room contained a round pit,

the “holy dirt,” adjacent Prayer Room

with photos, all the crutches you could use.

People ate the soil, back when they had no shame,

nothing to lose.

Theirs are the crutches!

I took some home in a vial.

The cliff dwellings nearby were different:

ruins of pueblos. Ladders and drawings,

worn stone steps. God dancing, as He always does,

in feathers, in the past—It’s where we see Him best.

How sweet and dry the American West is:

blue sky, scrubbing brush, canyons,

the smooth run of car wheels.