Devotional Grove – poetry by Mia Schilling Grogan

Devotional Grove


I. Antiqua 

 
Old Pin Oak, 
rucked in grey, 
your youth bleeds through you: 
covered in spring’s velvet leaflets 
and cloaked in their mist of pale-pink silver. 
Promise, Old Tree, keeper of years, 
to prove our belief; 
stand there for the new life to come.

Attend.


II. Cogitare

Consider, Tree of Holly, antique symbol,
that in fact, you do yield:

to robins who flock to your foliage, 
evade your spikes, 
and gorge on ripened berries till they’re sated.

Impressed by this apologue
I google your types:
the holly as shelter, breath-giver.

Putting down my phone, 
towards you I walk,
stripped and storiless.  

O Bearer of the analogic,
consider my neediness,
and through your bounty heal and challenge me.

Assent.


III. Custodes

Cedars so tall,
your watchfulness here
beside our door
subdues all fear.
Over this roof
grow side by side
to shade and guard, 
to brace and bide.

Praise them.


IV. Alta

Lofty White Pine
you pierce the tree line. 
Tallest your crown’s claim.  
Your needles strive, to touch the sky --
to thread, so it seems, the welkin.
Cast down your cones, our cheerful boon,
And express for us steadfastness --
so we also may be steadfast for others.
And teach us to value altitude
that is pruned of all arrogance:

Content. 

V. Domini
The holders of the house labored in the garden
-- and trees rooted in their verdant terrace. 
How the Black Cherry seeds itself:
-- May we bloom where we are planted, come the Spring. 
And the Beech spread its crown – 
-- and overshadowed them.  
Leaf for them, you scattered seedlings of change
-- that they may be blown away by the plenitude of chance.

Flourish, we exhort our sweet Earth (though her bounty unsettles us); that we, to whom the diversity of Life, her gift, is revealed through its decline, will by our delight and shame, be fired with an ardor for this undertaking – to serve her wild caprice.   

Consent.

Mia Schilling Grogan is an Associate Professor of English at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.  She is a medievalist, who publishes in the areas of hagiography and women’s spiritual writing. Her poems have appeared in America, Presence, First Things, The Windhover, and Ekstasis among other journals.