The Divine Hours at Shotpouch Creek with Hildegard von Bingen
For Alison Townsend, with whom I shared
this artists’ residency in Oregon
Invitatory
Deep in a river valley in another century
and country, I see you wading, Abbess Hildegard,
into your knot herb garden, chanting the name
of each plant you pass along interlocking pathways—
Rosemary for memory, Chamomile for soothing,
Angelica for fever. Your robe brushing against
them sweeps the tang of lemon balm, cool sweetness
of mint, pepper-musk of sage into moist air
where they steep into the elixir of summer morning.
Beyond it all, the shelter of tall trees—green pressing
in from all directions. You twirl to take it in,
call it viriditas—the word you must create since
there’s never been a name for spirit streaming
through the crickets’ shrill staccato, the hymn
of birdsong, and all the gold and purple blooming
that pulses through you into poems of praise
beneath your quill pen—psalms for your sisters’
voices, your theology of greenness.
Nine centuries later—and two decades after meeting
on a deep green island—Alison and I arrive
in the Mary’s River valley. On our first evening
in the cabin we find a record of your music,
play it on a turntable antique as your model
of devotion. We chop and stir garlic, squash and basil
for our dinner—twisting and swirling round
the kitchen in this oldest dance of women.
Into the euphony of sound and scent
twirling around us, Alison whispers:
Can’t you feel that Hildegard’s here with us?
Matins
Hildegard, we give thanks for the choir
of your sisters singing in the polyphony
of morning—cool alto of creek water
curling around stones, trilling of bushtits
in the willows, descant of bees
lifting from columbine to daisy.
Lauds
You flesh has known delight, you sing
to Mary (your fresh Virgin)
like the grassland touched by dew.
This morning, Hildegard, the meadow
sings of you as I stand knee-deep
in damp green, my skin humming
within moss-tinted mists
rising like plainchant from
the deep nest of fallen grasses.
Terce
Let us sing of saints—
martyrs like your Ursula and her
11,000 virgins uprooted by lust
and greed to wander blue-green seas,
evading earthly marriage until seized
and massacred. And all the Elements
heard the great cry.
Now let us sing of giant conifers
on mountains that surround us,
lifting arms of praise in virgin forests.
Let us revere these ancient sisters,
sprouted centuries before you quickened
in your mother’s belly—moss-mantled
behemoths growing a thousand years
and more, mothering this forest.
Let us wail as they lie splayed
across the slaughtered hillside.
Let all the elements hear the great cry.
Sext
Someone once grew herbs
in a small patch outside this kitchen.
A faithful few—lavender, mint, oregano—
remain despite the unruly crusade of thistle,
vetch, hawksbeard, and hairy cat’s ear—
their names alone enough to prickle tongue
and throat, make a body crave one of your balms.
No doubt you’d discover a metaphor lurking—
the devil and his minions invading this small Eden?
Maybe you’d kneel to root out the intruders.
Or rally your nuns to take up hoes and pitchforks
so that—like me—you could drift off to write about them.
None
The first thing we notice about the horse
we call Shady Girl when she steps
from the shadowed grove as we walk by
is the blaze on her cinnamon forehead like the white
blur of stars across your vision of Creation.
Horses are communal, Alison whispers.
They don’t like to be alone.
We peer through clustered maples,
but we spot no sisters but ourselves.
On my next afternoon stroll,
I reach into my pocket and call
her to the fence for a small feast.
Aren’t we made to feed each other
from the green harvest of our hearts?
The horse accepts each apple slice,
somber as a girl taking Communion,
velvet lips grazing my palm like kisses.
Vespers
In the middle of the journey of your life,
Hildegard, flaming tongues sizzled
in your mind, directing you to give voice
to your visions, and words streamed forth,
lifting you from your sick bed to record them.
From the moment we rise, my sister-friend and I
trace singular circuits, each answering the call
we’ve arrived here in midlife to obey, our silent
voices contrapuntal as we scribble for hours.
From the loft, tapping the keyboard, I watch
her mahogany bob bounce down the creek path
as she hoists her tea mug high so as not to spill
a single drop. Settling into the blue lawn chair,
she opens her notebook, pauses, her pen
a dragonfly floating above the page.
Sometimes our moments approach
one another like voices briefly crossing
or soaring parallel through your music—
like the two butterflies we watch touching
down on the same rock, slowly fanning
carnelian and black wings in what might be
a greeting, then gliding off in opposite directions.
Returning from my walk
under lichen-veiled alders,
I tiptoe past Alison’s head
bowed over a book in the last light,
legs sprawled over the arm
of an overstuffed chair
like the young girls we return
to when we’re reading.
Compline
Dear Hildegard, hear us
as night drapes its black mantle
over every window, extinguishing
the green light pressing in
from every angle. Be with us
as our heads nod in lamplight
over field guide pages so we might love
this world more deeply as we learn
to read its leaves and count its petals;
discern one melody of birdsong
from another; translate cryptograms
etched along the stream bank
into claws and paws of other creatures.
Give us this night the dense soil of sleep
even as creek and forest awaken into owl,
raccoon and mountain lion all around us.
Let no nightmare invade this moment’s peace.
Plant the seeds of vision in our dreams.
Green Lady, be the rush light
that leads us into this world’s daybreak.
Judith Sornberger’s poetry chapbook The Book of Muses came out in July 2023 from Finishing Line Press. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas (Shanti Arts), I Call to You from Time (Wipf & Stock), Practicing the World (CavanKerry), and Open Heart (Calyx Books)—and five other chapbooks. Her prose memoir The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany is from Shanti Arts. She is a professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania where she taught in the English Department and founded the Women’s Studies Program. She lives on the side of a mountain outside Wellsboro Pennsylvania.
Amethyst Review 