One Poem by Susan Powers

 

Pilgrimage 

 

Bedraggled pilgrims stumble toward Canterbury. 

Some with horses, their weary nostrils blown wide. 

Wooden wheels stick in mud, but faith drives them on. 

They yearn to kiss Becket’s footprints, 

clutch bone relics against their hearts. 

Lepers cling to hope, a balm, a cure: 

knees on gray stones in a chapel. 

 

Your mother also journeys through darkness, 

borne by an ambulance announcing its presence, 

rocking her body in blinking lights. 

 

Those pilgrims planned their trip – round loaves wrapped in cloths, dried meat, 

but your mother packed nothing – she is the package, trussed on a gurney. 

After she fell, she watched the nurse’s thick soles stop by her nose. 

Then hands cradled her body, placed her into the open yawn of an ambulance door. 

Your mother, those pilgrims, 1000 star-lit years apart, suffering, 

searching for relief, the surgeon’s steady hands, the cold shrine, pills, a needle. 

 

Your phone rings you awake, summons you. You glide on empty roads, 

early morning air sharp in your lungs. When you arrive, your mother 

is happy to see you. She knows your face if not your name. 

In the yellowed light of the ER, the endless waiting room,  

you read to your mother -- the stories she loves about crusty 

Vermonters wrestling with tractors, demanding privacy.  

 

A harsh sun bore down on the pilgrims, they leaned 

against canes, wore out their shoes, prayed to saints. 

At night, they told stories of vain roosters and human error, 

bawdy tales with determined widows, greedy men, corrupt priests. 

Like your mother, the pilgrim’s eyes gleamed – hungry for life, folly and all. 

Your words transport your mother, your words envelop her in love, 

Your words are the glittering stones of the shrine, the grail: 

love flickers, warms your mother’s beating heart, heals her wounds. 

 

We are travelers all. We search for our stories, long for the ending, 

dread the dark night of denouement, the quieting of blood, hold 

our relics close to our hearts, hold the hands of those we love.

Susan Powers has been writing stories and poems since she was a small child, and writing continues to be a major force in her life. Her life's work has consisted of teaching in a variety of settings including high schools, colleges, and overseas teaching assignments. Susan’s home in Scotland, Connecticut is tucked away in the woods where she has the daily privilege of being immersed in nature. She is also grateful for the vibrant and supportive community of writers and poets in Connecticut. You can find her poems in the Orenaug Mountain Journal (November 2023), Sixfold magazine (Summer 2021, Summer 2020, and Winter 2013), and in Tiferet  (2011).  The New London Librarium published Susan’s chapbook, Break the Spell  (2010), and she is currently working on a new poetry collection.