Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor – a poem by Jane Greer

Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor 
 
It is the bridge of the Word, the bridge of his body,
that I climb, panting. I cling to the bridge of his body.
 
The tempestuous sea of this life lunges for me, 
and I laugh as it rages beneath the bridge of his body.
 
The bridge has three steps. At the first, I kiss his feet,
then his side, then his mouth, as I scale the bridge of his body.
 
By his pierced feet I ascend to his pierced side,
by his side to his gall-stung mouth, on the bridge of his body.
 
The height of divinity, hard-humbled to earth,
Most Holy Absurdity, is the bridge of his body.
 
Spirit will save me, spirit will lift me up,  
but spirit owns form, and form is the bridge of his body.
 
It is for you, he says, Daughter, Beloved, 
that I built and broke and rebuilt the bridge of his body.
 

Jane Greer founded Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement, in 1981, and edited it until 1993. She has two collections of poetry, Bathsheba on the Third Day (The Cummington Press, 1986), and Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020) and lives in North Dakota.