These poems are, like last month’s, from a manuscript on The Book of Kells, which I’m still working on.  I have six full-length books of poetry, and all are available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Crooker/e/B000APR7GU/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
 

​Book of Kells
October 19, 2013:  folio 253v-254r

The text of the day is open to Luke, chapter sixteen,
verse ten.  The initial N, made up of blonde men

facing off, grappling and tugging at each other’s beards,
becomes the first word in the section that warns us

that no servant can serve two masters.  Irony intended.
Later, in beautiful insular majuscule, the open letters filled 

in red and blue, we read You cannot serve both god and money.
I wish that these words would rise off the page, a swarm of bees, 

become honey to spread on our daily bread.  When the scribes 
made an error, in a world before white-out, the correct word

was inserted in a box of red dots.  Aren’t there words today 
we’d like to amend like that?  In this dimly lit room, circling

glass cases, I return to view the same vellum over again.
Twelve hundred years later, clear as the day it was written,

I think of Henri Nouwen: The word is born in silence, 
and silence is the deepest response to the word. 

-first published in The Christian Century



Kermes Red


For the Book of Kells,
monks made Kermes red, bled
from crushed bodies
of small pregnant insects.
Not the red lead of minium,
rusty red-orange, but bluer,
truer, to scarlet, to flame.
Look how its placement
makes gold gleam,
a dream of a color
that burns to set
your yearning heart
aflame.

-first published in The MacGuffin



Gold

Not precious metal,
but the sun:  yolk
candled and cradled
inside the thin shell.
Or else it was orpiment,
called yellow arsenic,
shining loudly on the page.
Not gilt flake or leaf,
merely plain pigment,
layer upon layer.
Breath of the Holy
Spirit made visible
darkness transfigured
into light.

-first published in The MacGuffin 



Ink


It’s made from what remains:
powder of oak galls, tincture
of iron, thin wine or vinegar— 
a mixture mysterious as a hag’s charm
or potion aflame in a cauldron.
How could these monks know in the future,
twelve hundred years later, that their hooks
and angles carved in the skin of a small herd
of calves using pens cut with feathers 
would make us stop in our tracks, full of wonder, 
stunned by the mystery of the alphabet, 
the fastness of the word.

-first published in The MacGuffin