The Poetry of (this) Place

Holy ground is where you find it.

I belong to a small, lively, open-door Episcopalian church in my west-coast city. (The picture above was taken by our rector during the early days of the pandemic, which is the only reason the door is closed.) Dearly as I love the worship space inside, I’ve made some of my best connections with my fellow believers — and with God — in the church’s little courtyard garden, where I spend time most Saturdays sweeping and pruning and talking with green things. Unsurprisingly, I’ve written a few poems there too.

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HIDE AND SEEK


While I sweep the church’s courtyard
and rake together trimmings from the shrubbery,
Abby and Jenna, released from music lessons,
crouch giggling in a corner of the porch
holding up pruned branches as camouflage.
“When Lily comes, don’t tell her where we are,
please, Ms. E.” And when Lily bounces
up the stairway from the lesson-room below,
I direct her straight-faced over to the maple tree,
around the corner to the garden shed, 
back indoors and up another stairway,
while her puzzlement grows and rustles of hilarity
from the corner of the porch grow too. Moments later
I am sweeping the sidewalk outside the courtyard gate
when squeals announce a Find, and I peer
over the fence to witness and be astonished.

The game continues, but now I am suspect,
convicted of misdirection, gradually ignored. 
I go on sweeping, watch players slink or gallop past 
in ones and twos, and muse, here in the church’s courtyard, 
on my affinity for evasion, my willingness to thwart 
the seekers who win by finding, to aid the hiders
whose victory is to escape unfound.

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CHURCH PORCH


Suppose one day they stopped coming,
gardeners with their pruning shears, congregants
with their prayer books, how long would it take
before the entrance sealed? Blood-leafed bougainvillea,
thorns long and sharp as any rose, reaches across,
wisteria cascades down, knots tendrils up,
curtains becomes walls – only the sparrow
and the mourning dove still find nest-high windows
upon the open sky.
		                  Unless, another day, a solitary
pilgrim, in human-holy desperation, braves
thorns, bees, impossibility, wriggles a way 
between, under, around – then stumbles, clear,
into a new enclosure: Anglican porch-beams
sturdy overhead, green breathing walls 
on three sides, and the arched red door,
enclosing what it does. Once a public step
where, Sunday after Sunday, going in
or out, they paused to shake hands, shake
umbrellas; now entirely, greenly
a pause, full stop. Once forecourt,
now sanctuary, set apart by leaf and vine,		
by beam and brick, by absence and Presence,
by echoes of old hymns and chant of bees,
by sparrows’ ticking and murmured litanies
of mourning doves.
			           And now the pilgrim’s
breathing steadies, slows, as he slides his back
down the red door, takes so to speak a pew 
on leaf-littered brick; prayer books left 
outside with pruning shears, yet here he sits, 
watches dust-motes fall quiet between green-
gold shadows, listens as motes of adoration
rise dusty, green-gold, from his shaken heart.

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photograph.]

I started coming to this church in 1999, not new to Christianity but looking for a different way to practice it. I started volunteering as a gardener a few years later — no experience, only a willingness to show up and pay attention.

My fellow gardeners taught me a lot, mostly by example and by hospitality. The plants taught me, as well — the wisteria and bougainvillea around the porch, the brave spindly roses and the sturdy rosemary shrubs that share their bed, the opulent camellias, the gnarled and apparently immortal euryops daisy bush. I learned from the friends and strangers of all ages who came in and out of the church buildings on Saturdays for meetings or music lessons or classes or chores. I learned from the folks walking past on the sidewalk, busy with their weekends or stepping tentatively through the open gate to ask a question or retrieve the inquisitive dog or toddler who’d charged in first.

One day I happened to be gardening by myself and found myself alone for a few minutes. I sat on the bench opposite the church porch and looked at the light playing on the leaves of this plant and that, and heard a truth speaking itself in the quiet: This is holy ground. And it’s home. You’re welcome here.

It’s a truth that’s stayed with me. In seasons when I’ve been unable — through no fault of the community or its leaders — to sit still in church on Sundays, all I have to do is slip out the door and down the porch steps, and I’m at ease again. Still in God’s house, still on holy ground, inhaling the green breath and green prayers of plants who’ve had roots in this parish, many of them, for longer than I have; ready and happy to greet my human fellow worshippers by the time they come out of Coffee Hour.

In the photograph at the top of this post the bougainvillea hasn’t blushed red yet, and the wisteria is just beginning to lean into its spring vigor, but can you see them starting to reach across the porch toward each other? Can you picture two little girls squidged into a corner of the porch, willing themselves invisible and trying not to laugh?

Yes, I find poems here. It’s holy ground, and it’s home.

I hope you’ve found a place like that in your own neighborhood, or among your memories. If you’re so inclined, I hope you’ll say a few words about it in the Comments. Mostly I hope you get to spend some time in that place soon. You’re welcome there. (But you knew that.)