439 - Mary of Egypt

Mary of Egypt
By Elizabeth Creamer

Born in 4th century Alexandria, Mary of Egypt was a prostitute for seventeen years before, inspired by an icon of the Virgin, she vowed to live the life of a desert hermit. For the rest of her long life, she lived entirely alone, encountering only one other human, a wandering priest Zosimus, who arranged to bring her communion.

"Our goal this year is to inspire every woman in this church to active service." (Recent resolution of a church women's committee)

They want me to join them, the women of the church.
Forgiving me my whispered past and their husbands'
familiar stares on my back when I stand in line
to share a crowded communion, no Zosimus in sight,
searching-a lifetime of miles of empty sand-to share
with me, in stillness, the presence of the Host.

All the long way to the rail, I feel their inspection
like a purgatory. It is, perhaps, the old scarlet
still clinging to my hair or the deeper, desiccated odor
of bones sloughing paper skin and thinner sex
which they forgive because seeing me kneel
they think they've got me-one of them at last.

They imagine my sun-raisined heart, now, like theirs
miraculously plumped with tears and crying out for company.
But, even as prayers converge, I wall myself
a sanctuary apart, practice a stillness so complete
it echoes like a catacomb that less than whisper
with which She tells me that it is right I walk alone.

Elizabeth Creamer's poetry has appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY on several occasions. She is an adjunct instructor in English at Paul D. Camp Community College in Virginia. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Grasslands Review, First Things, and other journals.

440 - Mary of Egypt

It was easier to hear her voice in Egypt where there was nothing
but sand white enough to mark the faintest impress of her breath
and a silence long as time or the unsleeping will to listen.
But, now, here, my ears ring with a dispiriting chorus
women calling me to join them in a litany of service like theirs,
charitably forgiving me when I slap away their pulling fingers
like a cloud of gnats stinging me into a bloody fellowship.

To heal the isolation they call loneliness or worse,
these sisters would dress me in their own Sunday best,
set me beside their families in the front pew of church.
Hearing my silence as empty, they cannot comprehend
that, invisible, I wait prepared blank canvas
primed to receive that brush stroke of light so colorless
it is discernible only against its simulation
the sun-bleached Paneremos of my dreams.