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Poetry

Kateri Tekakwitha: From October 14, 1939

Walter J. OngOctober 14, 1939

Where earth goes to water.
The dark young birches cow—
Yet brown and dapple, daughter.
No silver now.

Down, down the white trees, felted
Now fast into the strand.
And the sun's green leaf-gold, melted.
Becomes thin sand.

Look! One sapling thrusts its arm, now paling fawn.
Out of the coal bed, Tekakwitha, into the new blue dawn.

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Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Paul Feeley
11 years 6 months ago
Horrible picture.
Mary Ziegenhagen
11 years 6 months ago
My affection for this saint rests almost entirely on my experience with a Franciscan Sister who chose the name.  Sister Kateri m OSF, was a nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Breckenridge, Minnesota during the 1950s.  She set an fine example for young women studying in that hospital's schools of nursing, medical records and x-ray technology.  We valued her instruction, friendship, kindness, and lively sense of humor.  I still think she was a saint and so now am glad the "lily of the Mohawks" is making her way through Vatican corridors of judgment and recognition of her holiness.
MICHAEL BARRETT MR
11 years 5 months ago
This poem reads like one of Gerard Manley Hopkins'!

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