The gardeners were recently given a beautiful St. Francis statuette, which has now been blessed and is ready to be placed in the grotto in the corner of the parking lot at All Saints. This poem tells of how the making of the grotto came about.
PORTAL
I wake, shaken by a dream
of creatures clad in rags,
cavernous mouths
chanting verses of doom.
Cawing crows echo this cruelty,
stick fingers pointing
to broken hearts and broken bones
where bald eagles hover.
Out of bed, enraged,
I bend my body in prayer,
kneeling on the rubble of stones
buried in a corner of the churchyard,
cracked in careless disposal.
Piece by piece,
I brush earth and dust from this destruction
to reveal a former shape and purpose,
my body the fulcrum and lever for the weight I lift.
Some fractured segments fall free with ease,
others lie buried deep within the earth,
stubbornly wedged into one another,
gripped by desiccated roots and debris.
Day after day more shapes come to light –
crescents, diamonds, fish, and fragments
freed from the shattered design.
Voices linger.
Who are you to recreate beauty?
Who are you to be a portal for the Light?
Day after day my hands shape a new form,
a reconstruction of the old into graceful lines –
complete in their imperfection.
Soon I will plant a succulent garden in the crevices,
a verdant pathway into this place of prayer –
a hollow, hallowed entrance
into the mystery of transformation,
where voices of darkness cannot penetrate –
where beauty is held forever in these rocks
embedded in the portal to my sanctuary.
Lolla Devindisch
October 2021
