-
Apologia Pro Vita Mea
- University of Arkansas Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Apologia Pro Vita Mea In Memory of Sister Richard you keep dying— another brittle limb near the center of the cloister garden falls in slow time from the weary eucalyptus. I can’t be there now stammering off key while you sing the Salve Regina perfectly in four parts, a coffin again borne with grace down the front stairs of the motherhouse. I try not to think of it as failure, the way so many of us vowed, then left, the way I promised you I would be an earthen vessel holding and handing down your passion for books. In springtime in the chapel, pink-orange quince blossoms – – on the altar, you make ready another burial, and learning of it weeks later, I find her copies of virgil and Horace yellowed without thought on my shelf. and knowing I did with my life the only thing I could do, I ask some sort of absolution from her in broken Latin. – – ...