(imagined reflections from St. Therese to her spiritual director) 1. Things I have found and adored: the dust that dances in the oratory, the ink of the night sky, its shifting clouds; the unexpected blessing of the snow, yes, but also the rain's fat drops, the sunshine poured like golden honey on my body as I kneel alone. The dregs and scrapes of paint I use to make the mundane holy, knowing now, as I do, that it already is. 2. I am told that sleep is sin (outside the rule of dark night hours on my mattress, roughly stuffed with hay) – illicit sleep caresses me at prayer, the choir stalls soften with its kisses, I let my head droop in sleep's warmth, O dove breast, O loosening blood – I am drunk, just a little, with pleasure at the solving of my body, at this offering of everything at once. 3. I offer you apologies, Mon Père, for today I have to write to you of nothing, the nothing life of penitence and prayer, the nothings of the recreation hall, where sometimes I have acted out my nothings to no critical acclaim. The nothing mornings when my head is as a void. The never- ending trial of nothing-ever-comes – ah, not until belief has come to utter nothing will I start to understand.
Sarah Law lives in London, and is a tutor for the Open University and elsewhere. Her collection Therese: Poems is forthcoming from Paraclete Press. She edits the online journal Amethyst Review for new writing engaging with the sacred.
Grand Little Things 