The Still Pilgrim Greets All Souls
by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell teaches English at Fordham University in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks, Mine and Waiting for Ecstasy, and four collections of poems: Moving House, Saint Sinatra, Waking My Mother, and Lovers’ Almanac. She has also published The Province of Joy, a book of hours based on the prayer practice of Flannery O’Connor; Fiction Fired by Faith, a biography of O’Connor; and Mortal Blessings, a memoir. A new book of her poems, Still Pilgrim, is forthcoming with Paraclete Press. http://angelaalaimoodonnell.com.
I was seated in my summer house
when the wild breath of winter blew through.
The clapboard rattled, the floorboards shook,
the doors puffed in and out with every shush,
and all the windows sang in their panes.
A celebration of souls said the went world,
the bent world, the tell-me-all-your-sins world.
The trees flung confetti at the sky.
All the glamour and all the gilt
of a season that passed me by
danced its last dance against my eaves
knowing there’s nothing I own
that I wouldn’t give for summer,
one more day with you after another.
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell teaches English at Fordham University in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks, Mine and Waiting for Ecstasy, and four collections of poems: Moving House, Saint Sinatra, Waking My Mother, and Lovers’ Almanac. She has also published The Province of Joy, a book of hours based on the prayer practice of Flannery O’Connor; Fiction Fired by Faith, a biography of O’Connor; and Mortal Blessings, a memoir. A new book of her poems, Still Pilgrim, is forthcoming with Paraclete Press. http://angelaalaimoodonnell.com.
I was seated in my summer house
when the wild breath of winter blew through.
The clapboard rattled, the floorboards shook,
the doors puffed in and out with every shush,
and all the windows sang in their panes.
A celebration of souls said the went world,
the bent world, the tell-me-all-your-sins world.
The trees flung confetti at the sky.
All the glamour and all the gilt
of a season that passed me by
danced its last dance against my eaves
knowing there’s nothing I own
that I wouldn’t give for summer,
one more day with you after another.
