Poetry
Two Poems
By Frannie Lindsay
Beatitude
You might, in the holiest hour
of your life, allow a yearling bull
to nibble your hair and stroke
your brow with his hay-scented tongue,
And if he does these things, draw him close.
Let the tolerant wind of his nostrils
pray through your buttonholes.
Take off your mittens
and muss the crimps at the cliff
of his brow as the cold-weather
tear from his sagging eye
dries on its lash-blades; feed him
a tuft of mint and receive
the blessing of him
as he swings his neck’s beam
against your chest
with no force at all.
Because I Asked
If God were a small girl,
She would rest in my father’s lap
for five or six minutes after
each sponge bath;
and tuck the Buffalo nickel
back behind his warm ear
so he’ll know where it is.
Frannie Lindsay’s first book of poems, Where She Always Was, was selected by J. D. McClatchy as the 2004 recipient of the May Swenson Award. Two poems from the book have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a former NEA Literature Fellow.
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I first came upon Beatitude in a New Yorker magazine and I cut it out to place it in my prayerbook. Since that time, I have
literally been summoned back to Beatitude over and and over again, when my soul needed the to allow “the yearling
bull to nibble my hair and ….let the tolerant wind from his nostrils pray through my buttonholes.” I needed to return to
the simplicity of the barn, to the entrusting stilling, wondrous Presence of God in being. Thank you Frannie Lindsay,
Thank you.