The Anchorite’s Album

Here is a tree,
an old green-shadowed
post oak trunking 
out at angles
he pondered
for years.

Here is the anchorite himself
with an icon of St. Godric
of Finchale, that merchant 
turned hermit. His eyes 
in the photograph goggling,
as if wondering who wants
this image of male 
Madonna and stone child.

Here is the bare gray cave
where he buried his decades, 
there the hole he shat in.

Here is a carrion crow. 
They say it fed him, 
though more likely
he fed it.

Here he is, stony faced, 
as if for all these quiet years,
God had yet to break the silence.

And here is the 
pondered oak
again. A green mixed 
with golden-orange this time
in an early autumn storm,
soaked recluse kneeling
in the foreground.

Here is the picture 
that probably gave
folks the idea 
he had the stigmata.

Here is the river
speaking to him
in a language
he had yet to learn,
all shadows and current.

His expression is uncertain
in this one, as if to say,
“Prayer changes us, not God”
is true whether or not
God exists.”

Here he is in winter,
beyond the bare-branched oak, 
chest deep in icy language, 
listening with his whole body.

Here is the line of pilgrims
he’d as soon avoid,
breaking his solitude
in search of answers.

Here he is lying 
beneath that oak
in Spring.

Let him sleep.





*Italicized line is a paraphrase of CS Lewis. The poem reacts to Godric by Frederick Buechner, and is modeled on the poem “The Travel Pictures” by Anne Porter.