Still Pilgrim: Poems
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About this ebook
"If rhyme and meter are, as Heaney said, the table manners of the language arts, then Angela Alaimo O'Donnell has set out a sumptuous feast, if not bardic, then beatific, recalling a time when pilgrims knew to spread good word by heart." —Thomas Lynch, author of Walking Papers and The Sin-eater: A Breviary
Still Pilgrim is a collection of poems that chronicles the universal journey of life as seen through the eyes of a keenly-observant friend and fellow traveler. The reader accompanies the Still Pilgrim as she navigates the experiences that constitute her private history yet also serve to remind us of our own moments of enlightenment, epiphany, and encounter with mystery. Each of the 58 poems of the collection marks a way station along the pilgrimage, a kind of holy well where the Pilgrim and reader might stop and draw knowledge, solace, joy, and the strength to continue along the path.
At the center of this spiritual travel book lies a paradox: the Pilgrim's desire for the gift of stillness amid the flux and flow of time, change, and circumstance. "Be still and know that I am God," sings the Psalmist, channeling the voice of the divine. "Teach us to care and not care. Teach us to sit still," prays the poet, T.S. Eliot. Still Pilgrim depicts and embodies this human dilemma—our inevitable movement through time, moment by moment, day by day, and the power of art to stop both time and our forward march, to capture the present moment so we might savor the flavor of life.
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Still Pilgrim - Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Prologue: To Be a Pilgrim
To be a pilgrim is to ring the stones
with the clean music of your best black heels,
each click a lucky strike that sparks a fire
to see by, that lights up the long and level road
you walk with no map, no stick, no wheels
to relieve you when your feet ache and tire.
To be a pilgrim own what you own,
stuff it in your clutch, lug it in your tote,
all the heavy history you’d like to lose
nestled up against your dead mother’s shoes.
To be a pilgrim you must be a killer
of myth, a new invention of desire.
Every pilgrim is a truth-teller.
Every pilgrim is a liar.
[ I. ]
The Still Pilgrim Invents Dawn
The still pilgrim climbs the Mountain of God.
She somehow has not lost her way.
Her feet find the prints where they have trod.
The sun feels less heavy today.
She holds him in her wind-chapped hands.
She shoulders him like a child.
She hoops him along the basalt sand.
She heaves him high against the sky
where he gilds the field gold.
This never gets old.
The pilgrim watches his slow rise—
she loves the shadow show he throws—
salutes the blue and shades her eyes
and turns her back and goes.
The Still Pilgrim Visits Ellis Island
Following the footprints of my people
I think of Grandma Rose’s tiny feet.
The way she slid them into nylon socks
and walked on heels thick as chopping blocks.
My size nine pumps click across the flagstone,
my Prada bag slung loose along my hip.
I take another picture with my iPhone,
uncap my Aquafina, take a sip.
The day her ship set out from Italy
her shoes shone black as deep mine coal,
dark rock that would feed her family,
kill her husband and stain her soul.
She stood no taller than a half-grown child.
Left footprints wider than a mile.
The Still Pilgrim Recollects Her Childhood
Inside my mind there sleeps another mind,
the child mind that used to dream disaster,
collected every darkness she could find,
trembled before death and what comes