This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Johanna Caton, O.S.B.
Assumptions
Strange alchemy of innocence:
how her absolute gift
came first—
even before the gift
of the Absolute
bore fruit,
how she assumed Magnificence,
into a tiny fiat, how Holiness
assumed lowliness
how our restless hearts’ Rest,
became restless in rapture,
and at last
assumed her—desperate,
the domesticity
of heaven.
Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun from Minster Abbey in Kent, England. Born in Virginia, she lived in the United States until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England. She writes poetry as a means of understanding the work of God in her life, whose purposes and presence can be elusive until viewed through the more accommodating lens of art and poetry. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Time of Singing Christian Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Christian Century, Amethyst Review and other venues. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee.
