Mary Dixon

 
Mary Dixon
 
Irrigation: A Meditation
 
Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured.
Origen
 
The gray Dodge’s
Bucket seats
Are unsprung,
matted with burlap;
            In imperfection: rhythm
 
The rosaried Jesus
Swings to the grind
Of a first to second
Shifting H pattern;
            The hidden silence beckons
 
Phil whittles
The stub of a
Dekalb Seed pencil
To a point
With his pocket knife;
            A pricked soul recounts origin
 
He checks off,
In a pocket note pad,
Numbered rows where
Streams path;
            In ordered chaos: perception
 
From a chugging irrigation pump,
He traces aluminum arteries
That span the field,
And pulse water into rows;
            A source, unseen, ploughs hearts
 
Phil checks the note pad,
Shuts corresponding gates,
Opens new veins
In odd numbers;
            Sequence orders reason
 
Drinking the pure cold
Water that gushes
To darken
The dirt-edged corn,
            Plunge to divine
 
 
He squeezes the last flow,
As the sun shuts
Its own stream
At horizon’s gate;
            Restriction unleashes desire
 
In cupped hands,
He feels a sudden rush of cool;
            In the darkness: unknowing
Fresh water runs
From the 30 foot well.
 
 
 
Mary Marie Dixon is a visual artist and poet with creative works in periodicals and a collection of poetry, Eucharist, Enter the Sacred Way, Franciscan University Press, 2008. Her focus on women’s spirituality and the mystics combined with the Great Plains and the spiritual power of nature appears in visual and poetic form.