A Poem for Saint Anna
O Theotokos, you appeared as a beautiful branch*
For years, we trudged and troweled
and tried a different way, tracked through the center
of dim towns, moved past barren fields in January’s thaw
over stone walls, dipping hooves, and dripping rooves.
A contrail crisscrossed the sky,
the eye followed wisps of smoke,
then a sudden curtain drop of sky blue
with white fence lines that appear in ascent
to mark the boundary between there and here.
We’d been led out of the sourlands
for twelve acres on a hill
by the grace of God, just as the sun
loosed its gold into a pool of rose.
That this path that is ours to take
despite the odd detours
is the path to God,
this foothold, a foundation
for another generation.
So we give thanks to Saint Anna,
honored mother,
the egg of the egg,
the sour made sweet
the Nest in the Tree, the trust that we
too may come to be
on such broad shoulders.
*from the Eastern Orthodox Matins of Sept. 9
Vasiliki Katsarou is a Greek and American poet. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Memento Tsunami, and two chapbooks, Three Sea Stones, and The Second Home. Her award-winning 35mm film Fruitlands 1843 was screened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Harvard Film Archive, the IFP/Angelika Film Center, among other venues. Her poems have been featured in art installations and in artist books, including one in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. Vasiliki is a Geraldine R. Dodge Poet in New Jersey, and a teaching artist at Hunterdon Art Museum.
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