By Judith, Hermit of Sarada
Tsalagi (Eastern Cherokee)
At sundown,
when the great, green
pines have grown
their shadowy doubles
in the mirror lake;
and the black-winged
crows, flocking thickly
overhead, have called
all the lost birds
quickly home to roost—
my hesitant heart
creeps out, timid, like
a common house mouse,
to sip only very briefly
at the water’s edge:
then oh! plunges deeply in—
just behind the floating geese,
in whose shimmering wake,
though like a wedge,
I am separate from nothing.
SISTER JUDITH THACKRAY, Hermit of Sarada, is a founding member of
the Interfaith Contemplative Order of Sarada.
