Kateri Tekakwitha

Poem

Walter J. Ong

From October 14, 1939

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

This poem reads like one of Gerard Manley Hopkins'!

I would have gone with this painting which is going to be featured at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs’ October 21 Mass and ceremony of her canonization.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/19/kateri-tekakwitha-portrait-will-be-featured-at-shrine-of-our-lady-of-martyrs-during-canonization-140748

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.

Horrible picture.

The National Catholic Review

Kateri Tekakwitha

Comments

Recently in Poem