A Word from the Piazza Del Limbo

Infrequently but massively I hear
from one who until recently seemed crammed
with caritas. Now, since the saving of his
soul his letters speak only of himself and
of Him and of their correspondence.
Indeed he declines to address himself to my
distress although I have written him of
various despairs. He does not even
upbraid me for Sloth, that sin with which
I wake and eat, that monkey on my back.
I realize that right this minute he may
be praying for me (though fretfully, the
way one writes a postponed letter, I MUST
pray for Belle today) because being yet
but a fresh-washed lamb he is bound to be
nervous about wasting God’s time, and of
course his own which I well understand.
I can also see that he has his own
chores if only, for Heaven’s sake, keeping in
good with God, with whom he has a close but
complicated relationship, while I at present
lack even a genuflecting acquaintance.
Not God’s fault God knows. I have avoided
Him since losing innocence. I do not
say evaded because, though arrogant,
I cannot imagine that He has been
loping breathlessly after me all these
years to heel me and herd me to
the fold. When I was a clear-eyed child,
reading about Artemis and Snow White,
I secretly got down on my knees when
the light clicked out and my brother and I
had said our I Lay Me’s and been kissed.
We slept on a screened porch almost out of
doors. In winter the bare floor was arctic
and I made certain that my knees were bare.
Then (a confirmed believer in my own
omnipotence) I prayed and prayed
for the maimed the halt the blind the hungry,
for every category of misery
that I could, in innocence, imagine.
No syllable of my petition ever varied
lest that deflect my power to persuade.
Yes I was magical then. I could fly.
When I climbed a tree I put my arms around
the trunk and my ear to the bark and heard
faintly, the dryad speaking, and I had the evil eye,
and the unicorn’s head lay once in my lap, and bare back
I galloped Pegasus. I moved Mt. Monadnock.
I walked across blue Mt. Hope Bay. I believed.
I lived too long a time in innocence,
but not long enough to wholly make break or addle
me. A critic said “the pilgrim for whom no chapel
waits.” But still I wear the scallop shell
and shall till I go down the well.
Ding Dong Belle