Hark the herald angel sings
I don't know what Gabriel stands for but
St. Anthony helps you find lost things
walking down the church aisle in all white
Maybe he can help me find what i search for
I’ll drop a crisp 20 in the shiny wicker basket if he does
But that’s not how it works
I want to put my fist through my head
And finally make it work right
Yet still I lay
Sitting and waiting in the cushy pews,
I long for the communion bread to be broken
And see the light that so many before me have seen
But as I walk up the aisle,
And bow my head to receive it
My saliva overwhelms the God within the grain,
and the bread breaks in my mouth
and is locked away in the
Tabernacle until next week
There I lay on the altar
With the bread and the wine
Once again defeated
On standalone Sundays I catch glimmers of His existence
But not in those statues of saints,
The thick books of hymns,
Nor the light filtered by stained glass.
Instead He plays hide and seek with me
On walks with tall whistling trees,
Upon glimmering stones washed with ice melt,
Within the fat bumblebee tumbling over my mom’s hydrangeas.
I wish I didn’t have to look so intently
It would be so much better to have a number I could call,
A book I could read,
A place I could go
To know Him as my father
When or wherever I wanted
But everywhere I expect to find God,
I find he is out to lunch
And I feel like a dunce for ever looking to catch Him
At the office
And meadows filled with wildflowers
Are flattened to make room for Gabriel and his Father
who don’t even bother to pay me a visit
even though I insist I want them at my side
To rest their hands on the small of my back and hold me,
Both full of pride
Instead they have tossed me out of their holy home
And I am orphaned
Faithlessly alone
But the beaver lets me watch as it swims in circles still
and the rain falls in pinpricks on the pond
on my head, washing my hair
the sun touches my face on a warm autumn day
as the leaves fall all around me
in spinning circles they drift to the ground
at dawn and at dusk
the blankets of crystal snow
know to glimmer just as the clouds above my head turn
pink
then purple
and as they grow slimmer
the infinite blue of the sky
cradles my eyes in a starry night
my very own starry night
my mountain home
she cups me
delicately
in her hands
And suddenly I find I can stand again
With a new strength I now know
I never needed gabriel or his father
Because as long as the sun shines
And trees grow
And snow falls in blankets upon the ground
I will already have a mother
To love me
As her very own.
Katie Gardiner lives in the mountain town Sun Valley, Idaho where she backcountry skis, hikes, and rock climbs. She enjoys reading and her favorite book is The Bell Jar. She hopes to travel the world and continue to create as she grows older.