To Love the World is to Mother It
To carry it on your hips,
whisper to it creed
and sky, sing over it what got stuck
in our bones before time.
To love the world is to chant
the parable
of its birth, its lover,
its lost name tossed like a coin
into the sea, waiting to be retrieved.
To love the world
is to speak its hidden name,
preach over it what foxes and warblers
know in their blood.
How else do we become ourselves?
The Lord announces the word,
and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng.
—Psalm 68:11
Abigail Carroll is author of Habitation of Wonder and A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim. Her poems have appeared in Sojourners, Christian Century, the Anglican Theological Review, Crab Orchard Review, and the anthologies How to Love the World and Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide. She serves as an arts pastor in Burlington, Vermont, and enjoys playing Celtic harp.
Amethyst Review 