I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. Writing stories, scripts and poems in diaries, on scraps of paper and smartphone notes – all of which ended up in the bin. By some miraculous turn of events something has changed in my life, this poem I share here was the beginning of it. Because when I went back to look at it, the day after writing, in amongst the notes on my phone, I didn’t want to throw it way. It wasn’t perfect, but it was saying something to me. Something more than I had been saying when I drafted it. From this poem I began to write my life book, describing why it was that I felt like a Reluctant Anchorite. When I finished that, I felt I needed a place to put the poems and writing I wanted to experiment with next. Father Hilarious kindly offered me a page on his website, and so here I am, where it begins:
A Reluctant Anchorite
Bang nails
through her hands
to keep her
still.
A fire burns out there,
blind through walls
of glass,
the smell of smoke
slips in; a knife
in her throat,
cold and sharp.
From when the first
wall went up,
she held a hope;
she would be free
one day.
Hope is the nail
in her foot
to keep her
still.
Be still and know
that I am
here.
Life goes on
in far off lands,
just down the road.
He comes to seek her,
to see if she’s well;
still held.
Then, off he goes
once more.
Yet, in her clear cage,
she dreams.
Walls of light
won’t hold a thought,
and God
is all in all.
Be still and know
that faith is real,
but you can’t
nail it down.
The heart is free
to stay
or go.
It pounds and pounds
her nail-free heart;
a song so wild,
so free.
It bangs out the nails
that sought
to pierce and
hold her in that place.
Be still and know
that she is free;
her soul in truth
was not found
there.