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558 - A Birthday Gift |
A Birthday Gift
One morning years ago
the three of us were sent to pick blackberries
in the empty lot across the street
for breakfast-a usual chore, not unpleasant,
for there were always two or three breakfasts.
On that morning we each said
a prayer to fill our buckets fuller
than ever before, and since it was my birthday,
we said another prayer for a special
gift. After two buckets were filled,
the youngest reached into a great mound
of vines-and touched a nest of snakes.
Harmless, to be sure, but she never again
accompanied us.She felt it an imposition and a betrayal
and still today she cannot reconcile the two;
I have explained, with as much scholastic logic
as I can muster, that an integrated life demands
reconciliation and that reconciliation presumes the existence
of opposites.She prefers to conclude the blackberries
were under a spell that day, that some father
snake divined her fear and arranged
his brood to warn her. She's given up praying
for blackberries; and I've wondered about my birthday gift.
William J. Rewak is a Jesuit priest and President of Santa Clara University, California. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, he teaches a seminar in poetry for engineers. He has published poems in various journals, such as the Milton Quarterly, DeKalb Literary Arts Journal, and the Arizona Quarterly. In his present position, he notes that "poetry is a nice break from audits, committee reports, and long-range plans."