My Sister, Caroline
Lady of the Beasts


Only the gulls know the fury
Of the seas she has sailed.
A dark Celt, she cast her lot
With a fair-haired Irishman, another far flung Celt.


Together they opened the gates for a saint and a prince.
She crosses borders at night.
She hallows the days with her devotions.
She has stood still, poised
As the typhoon of human frailties
Assaulted her eyes and heart.

She loves stories and the people
Who inhabit them.
At the hint of her approach
The monsters give up their groanings.

What we at first thought in her to be
A kind of disciplined civility
Now unmasks itself as an ocean of mercy.

Here, now, she comes to us again
a warm star filled night
Reflected in a hundred pairs
Of deep luminous jurassic eyes.

DECEMBER 1998