Pieta
I
“I hear that when God closes a door
he must open a window.”
Sister Louise did not respond to my joke.
She was unmoved from her post
at the window,
as if waiting for God
to emerge from the rain
and remove the pane,
staring at something
I could not see.
I returned to digging
my jackknife into the table,
carving out meaning
in random numbers
in hopes of fooling students,
years to come
after me.
II
Indescribable, but
unforgettable, the feeling
of wet clay drowned
in neglected buckets,
crafted into figurines
by children before they are ready.
“Come inside!” and they race indoors
before the rain
soaks their uniforms, their skin,
and “catch cold”
as Sister Louise says—
All except little Tessie.
Making a masterpiece
out of the melting clay.
Tessie—stubbornly fighting
the burrowing tack
under her fingernails
the too tight black shoes
now sopping socks
Sister Louise calling.
The girl studies her handiwork.
It is no Pieta.
(It is more grass than dirt.)
But it is hers,
and pray she saves it,
or else let all Pietas be
cold stone and empty
eyes, unable to cast
a thousand storms
sinking into the deep
trenches, the Styx,
the waiting Leviathan.
III
“Come inside!”
Sister Louise stands at the arch
until a stream from the roof
narrowly misses her wimple.
She closes the door.
She moves to the window,
wipes away the steam on the pane,
and waits.