At St. Matthew's in Rose—
well, the courtyard's abloom
with wild rose in the bushes
I walk from the Castle keep,
past a field edged with yarrow
and shoots tipped with the pungence
of onion flowers
For miles toward the Pentland
hills, fields buttered with rape:
their cinquefoiled heads stinging
the air with an expansive,
floodlit yellow
Today's homily is on love
and longing, the kind
of yearning one body has
for another—
not, says the Scottish priest
without fanfare, a sexless
yearning: for have we not
been made of spirit
and of flesh
Flesh that leads the heart and
from its warm bed raises it,
desirous, to the trumpet
call of the world—
He must have been born
in these hills, where sheep
and horses stand sentinel
over grass, where tubers lie
curled in the nourishing earth,
mimicking the body's frugal
but thoughtful progress—
understanding how something
fattens, sweetens, despite the bitter cold,
on essential fire
See how everything tilts
to its other—
How falcon and owl and hare,
the other unnameable creatures
crying out in heat and hunger
in the glen, render themselves
vulnerable to each other
How the horizon
throws back its arms
and the sky presses upon
its length, morning and evening,
flushing from lilac to rouge
See
how they love
one another
How things call,
as they must, each
to the perfection
of the other,
saying
Finish me
as the heavy-hipped
bees hum their song
at my window,
reminding me
to praise.
© Luisa Igloria
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