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Where Is the Saint If Not in the Slightest of Things?
Paulann Petersen

She could be the small brindle bug
creeping across my left sleeve-cuff.
The sight so startling
I jolt, flicking my wrist hard,
knowing I’ll knock her off.
But don’t, and so with my right hand
I cuff my cuff, flinging her to the oak floor.

She takes a few wobbling steps
and I speak to her—my apology. Of sorts.
Little Bug, why did I recoil at you
taking a walk on the Nepalese cotton
of my purple top? You are small,
and I am—in all truth—far less
than harmless.

With one soft fingertip, I brush her
onto a botanical postcard I’ve been using
as a bookmark. Now she rides
atop an image of a lemon plum branch
both in flower and in fruit.
For a few slow breaths, I keep level
these painted buds, blossoms,
and seed-swollen wombs, a platform
to carry her safely out the front door:
that fine balance the sacred requires.
I tip then tap the card, setting her
into the rain-damp garden,
beseeching this tiny saint to thrive—
green-fed in beatific mosses.

—
Paulann Petersen was Oregon Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014, and she has seven full-length collections, most recently One Small Sun from Salmon Press of Ireland

Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The New Republic, Catamaran, and Prairie Schooner. The Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds chose one of her poems as the lyric for a choral composition that’s now part of the repertoire of the Choir at Trinity College, Cambridge.

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