Postulant Peregrine

A shaft of afternoon equinox sun shines on priest’s Calvaria or back like an emerald hill.

And our fate’s song is intertwined still with all creatures great and small.

As postulant pilgrim prepares with skill to disengage, engage and be engaged

I think long about all creatures, Carmel and wonder who and what was encaged.

It is us out here who tap on pipes of our sergeanted prison with Zoom deluded

Till network machines surge and teem with argent traps as our spirit is denuded.

No, there’s no medicine nor pill to cure the ligatured soul filled with illusion.

Surgeons removed ill attachments and now your church’s doctors too will.

In the soul’s urge for mystic journey butterfly, birds and bees flit and tell

Of fleeting flowing inspiration of God’s real spell in nature’s writ signature

So those who sacred texts reject not a whit to read can still follow a seed.

When I was small some of the boys used say the nuns were like penguins

They saw in the Dublin zoo, but you don’t see them any more as habits hush

Or nothing near so much and that is a loss people have been led to believe

Is progress in a rush, though schools and hospitals came from their care.

There is no desire to depict fairly in false mechanical matrix that lies all around.

I heard from you, Carmelites had gowns with stripes once, like badgers.

And yet we here graze in herds like buffalo on the plain oblivious to conflict.

Oh how we can fret to be free in our own lives unable to sort or see Mediatrix from

The media cage tricks we live in when we reject our capacity to inflict sin and hurt.

Reflecting animal wisdom, Aesop told us about the tortoise and the hare.

We are nervy, surging quick to leap without looking nor keep our feet on the ground

While the slow one by choice takes her time in the interior softened in true

Matrix of the Mother sombre and comforting in the castle keep sound.

And if neck out of shell to predator comes I shall hear the nun’s hymns hum.

The technocritical warned us about technique and technology a century ago

And that we must slow down in community gazing into spiritual depth.

I see you don the rich chocolate brown-like wings coloured of fertile earth we return to

Warm with sisters who sink while soul flies to the ground of being.

Wherein the vine is prepared soil and loam grown with grapes

Wherefrom wine is pressed out of moist loom of Mother’s grace.

Whereon giants of the Order walked not three giant tortoise lives past.

Like elephants the capable senior sisters might from mental boxes recall all.

Our neighbours’ hens in our back garden used relax me as they wandered

Focused on their world contentedly though foxes harried them at night.

The holy quarry attracts crepuscular equerries of the unholy.

I remember a gravestone in the Boyne Valley of a Priesthunter

I thought of the religious and nuns hunted but now I think anew.

Divine raptors as well swoop in invisible spaces for souls to renew.

Hopkins knew his chevalier Christ as sight of falcon windhovering.

Peregrine wings like pèlerin of kestrel, owl, hawk, harrier, eagle, kite,

Hoods and cowls, plumage as habit, cloister is cliff nest of dark night

There to take flight to divine dimensions of light and true word.

As in The Hound of Heaven, God was divine pursuer from heavenward

Through celestial joists to watch the prey for whom you pray.

And who are we then there where we hop in a blur like the hare?

I recall as a boy watching a programme about the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

When there was no water only the secretive baboons knew where.

The Bushman walked to a sandbank before monkeys in the trees about

Making sure they could see him put nuts in a cliff hole he made before he left.

Curiosity aroused, the baboons came and put their fist in to carry

But with the nuts added they could not yet pull the entirety out.

Greedily he would not let the booty go just as we get unwisely trapped by sin

To have and to hold and to get away cleft fixed by the grasp in hope.

The Bushman came back and collared the creature and tied him to a tree.

A block of salt left he departed and the hungry monkey feasted after a while.

At dawn the hunter opened the collar and the thirsty beast ran to the water

Slaking thirst soon revealing source the baboon otherwise would keep hidden.

Lord let us be pursued from yonder by Holy Spirit, Mary and Her servants.

In chaste chase don’t allow our spirit by mundane machine and hype be carved.

Help us let go of sweet, tang, tart things we find that please, tease, mix and capture our mind

To make travelling heart and spirit sick or peace unravel and unwind.

May we not forget the joy and wisdom of our fathers lest we go thirsty and starve.

In an inverted matrix reality is illusion and Real is hidden water kept fonder.

Technocracy wants to turn us inside out to externalise all in the extended phenotype.

External environment is like a beaver’s dam, part reflection of selfish genes.

Dawkins says we are accidental beings, mistaken machines of no meaning but to founder.

The Seventh Mansion seals resistance for the Real which repels and refutes revolution

Against God that began in the Garden, wherein spiritual heart rejoices really contained

Yielded more than glass container or Crystal Palace to Baal as Dostoevsky detected.

Elijah’s spiritual daughters must war on high with different weapons against black magic

Wielded by sorcerers of technique and hi-tech that seeks to spell in code a tragic end.

Postulate of presence divine is last post for postulant prized and prised free for posteriority.

Merlons of Teresa’s city’s crenellated battlements become blackbirds of the City of God.

Lest we be gulled, we must be calm and wise as serpents without joining their company

To know they might slither in the undergrowth or first mansion after basking in the sun.

We must be gentle as doves or Mother’s balm who warns of the infectious invaders

That trouble the mystic body of her Son and taunt and torment once again.

May you drink from penultimate fountain after singeing sun stinging on a hot day in Ávila

And walk the ramparts at cool eve past the eaves of an old Moorish moonlit night.