“The Visitation” by John O’Donohue (poem)

Kollwitz, Kathe_Mary and Elizabeth — Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945), *Mary and Elizabeth*, 1929. Woodcut, sheet 14 × 13 1/2 in. (35.6 × 34.3 cm). Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York.

In the morning it takes the mind a while
To find the world again, lost after dream
Has taken the heart to the underworld
To play with the shades of lives not chosen.

She awakens a stranger in her own life,
Her breath loud in the room full of listening.
Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief
Of belonging to what cannot be seen.

Soon she can no longer bear to be alone.
At dusk she takes the road into the hills.
An anxious moon doubles her among the stone.
A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.

Two women locked in a story of birth.
Each mirrors the secret the other heard.

John O’Donohue (1956–2008) was an Irish poet, philosopher, and best-selling author of Anam Cara (1996), Conamara Blues (2001), and To Bless the Space Between Us (2008), among other books. Ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1982, he retired from priestly ministry in 2000 to devote himself to full-time writing and social activism. He was deeply influenced by Hegel, Meister Eckhart, and Celtic spirituality, and much of his work has to do with beauty, friendship, and how the material and the spiritual intertwine in human experience.