The National Catholic Review
Poem
Oct 14 1939 - 12:00am | Walter J. Ong
From October 14, 1939
Image

Where earth goes to water.
The dark young birches cow—
Yet brown and dapple, daughter.
No silver now.

Down, down the white trees, felted
Now fast into the strand.
And the sun's green leaf-gold, melted.
Becomes thin sand.

Look! One sapling thrusts its arm, now paling fawn.
Out of the coal bed, Tekakwitha, into the new blue dawn.

Comments

MICHAEL BARRETT MR | 11/6/2012 - 10:39pm
This poem reads like one of Gerard Manley Hopkins'!
Mary Ziegenhagen | 10/16/2012 - 3:27pm
My affection for this saint rests almost entirely on my experience with a Franciscan Sister who chose the name.  Sister Kateri m OSF, was a nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Breckenridge, Minnesota during the 1950s.  She set an fine example for young women studying in that hospital's schools of nursing, medical records and x-ray technology.  We valued her instruction, friendship, kindness, and lively sense of humor.  I still think she was a saint and so now am glad the "lily of the Mohawks" is making her way through Vatican corridors of judgment and recognition of her holiness.
Paul Feeley | 10/16/2012 - 12:17pm
Horrible picture.

Recently in Poem

The Flea (February 25, 2015)
They Build a Hogan in Coal Canyon, Arizona (February 17, 2015)
[Rooster, rooster] (February 11, 2015)
God Watching (January 28, 2015)
His Vision (December 23, 2014)