from the anchorite cell
don’t call me Norwich for I might be a north witch

I don’t like the world
and it doesn’t like me

it didn’t like me first
for I would go into it
to find pleasure
and
the promise of creation

the world tried to rape me
got closer than it should have
and then
the mistrust became a crystal thing

or a diamond
and I became the crystal
faceted
and fragile

and what is left for me
escept to escape the planet
living in a place of peace
perhaps
unfallen
and it
take me in

I suppose
such a world is heaven
since I’m not on other planets
and can’t go
and could not consider
for
the barricaded might that would keep me out
and back on Earth
the wicked Earth

and yet for six days it was good
and us
and then the rest
and then outcast
and all the generations to ruin everything

and
we find old interesting
for archaeology
yet
isn’t what is found a record
of the same way we behaved
back then

and yet to look on an artifact
and believe
they had hopes
and
they tried
the first owners in their origins
wanting
good lives
if
at first and finally
some sense in having been both made
and placed

but
today I could not help them
and I would look on their records
not with disdain
but
forlorn
for all they must have tried

and who brought them down instead
because
so that
their parts of Earth were cursed

maybe from the start
maybe a plan
at
least a possibility
in Eden

and what is left of me
can breathe and function
only
if I’m undiscovered by the strong
to capture and
to
torture me
as have my peers
if any
been captured and scoured of body
and of spirit

and what does the servant of Job say
but that
only I am left
to tell

c l couch


Julian of Norwich (c. 1343), also known as Juliana of Norwich, the Lady Julian, Dame Julian or Mother Julian, was a medieval English Catholic anchoress. Her writings, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, are the earliest surviving English-language works attributed to a woman. They are also the only surviving English-language works by an anchoress.

(excerpt from Wikipedia with a little bit of adapting


the poem is a fictional account of no one in particular)


photo by Tom Juggins on Unsplash
Norwich