Mercy Wears a Red Dress

By David Craig

The work of a wonderful secular poet, Billy Collins, provides a great model for Christian writers. His Coleridge "conversation poems" allow for real play and comedy, all in the service of profundity. These are veins that have not been suitably mined by poets who have access to the larger humanity that only Jesus can provide. But there's more than comedy in this collection. The Sorrows of Mary offer a sober truth, as do the four Gospel sonnets; both sections provide a bracing interlude before we get back to high-spirited comedy in the St. Anthony poems--where the sainted speaker disdains direction and instead carries on about whatever is on his mind at the moment. In all, Mercy Wears a Red Dress offers a slice of the abundant life, a knowledge echoed in a Protestant hymn: "I read the back of the book and we win."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532608049

David Craig

David Craig was born in Aberdeen and educated there and in Cambridge. He has taught literature and social history in schools and universities in England, Scotland and Sri Lanka. He has published several books on Natural History and Social History, including The Glens of Silence which was published by Birlinn in 2004. He lives in Cumbria.

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Mercy Wears a Red Dress

David Craig

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Mercy Wears a Red Dress

Copyright © 2016 David Craig. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

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8

th Ave., Suite

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Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0803-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0805-6

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0804-9

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

December 6, 2016

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Papal Sash

We did say a rosary in the car—

Advent is kind of trumped

To Our Lady

Sagrada Familia

The Vatican

I use a tiny bowl for cereal

Yeats, once a raven, haystack

Pat’s face tints

Larry fights a Rottweiler

Pix’s horse

Grandma McElwee’s Irish house

My parents bought me

My twelve-customer paper route

Sports-ing

Being a winner

Sunday mornings settle in

The slowest flower

A line, shaken, stirred

My garage indicts me

Life goes on after I sin

The post Confessional rise

Birthday poem

I found this old entry about my son

When the kids were born

Harry the Schnauzer

Thomas Merton doesn’t make the fudge—

There is a hollow in winter

What will make us live good lives

Our Lady appears so often these days

The local librarians are generous

Christmas on a county road

We invented chocolate milk

Giving Bridget a ride to school

Poem for Jack

A turtle is considered obese if it is too chubby to withdraw into its shell

The light blue, a touch of white

At the West Virginia Dept. of Motor Vehicles

I think the VPAA must get irked

If your name is Rufus

People in the third world

When I finally caught up with him

The first time we went over the Kovach’s

Whenever you think you’ve got someone pegged

Beetle busy, the world goes on

So much light green encroaches

O Great Cataract, volume and vowel

Mercy wears a red dress

Hand in Hand

The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary

After Simeon

The Flight into Egypt

The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple

Mary Meets Jesus on the Way to Calvary

Jesus Dies on the Cross

Mary Receiving the Pierced Body

The Body of Jesus is Placed in the Tomb

The Seven Sorrows and Seven Joys of St. Joseph

The Doubt that is Joseph

The Poverty of Jesus’ Birth

The Circumcision

The Prophecy of Simeon

The Flight into Egypt

The Return from Egypt

The Loss of the Child Jesus

Gospel Sonnets

Through Beelzebub

A tree and its fruits

The Pharisees would be a Sign

The return of the unclean spirit

St. Anthony Speaks

The presentation made by St. Anthony to people who spoke various different languages

St. Anthony Preaches to the Fish

How He was Seen Simultaneously in Two Places

St. Anthony Assists a Monk who was Tempted Sexually

He replaces a woman’s hair that had been torn off her head

He reveals one of Satan’s tricks to the friars

How he boldly preached against vices

How a downpour did not dampen his listeners

The angelic postman

Notes

Acknowledgments

The Papal Sash

We did say a rosary in the car—

that was something, though it was hard to hear

all the voices. Today I’ll go to Confession,

can’t say which of my lambs will follow.

Onward Christian Soldiers we are not,

except for Mrs. Polite, as mom calls herself

in one of Jude’s programs.

And in truth, she has grown, by leaps

and bounds, while the rest of us,

I’m afraid, are more hopper types—

about the back yard, in the basement,

all over the furniture; hopping

and nibbling, nibbling.

We are still everything we aren’t.

There’s no brightening it:

the flag we will wave when Jesus comes back

will be a beat one. We’ll probably

have to tie one of the ends in a knot

to the staff; though our waving, we hope,

won’t be abashed, or too much

of an embarrassment for our neighbors.

Still, today is a new day, and there is

the Confession thing. Life does get better,

like that horrible PRINCE OF EGYPT song:

If you believe—though I don’t think

creatively seeing makes anything happen.

Like the rest of our lives, that’s too shallow,

shoddy to do much good.

This is the Valley of the Lord, east end.

The part near the river, behind the tracks.

We can clean up, comb our hair,

but there’s no hiding who we are.

We are the blessed.

Advent is kind of trumped

by the Christmas tree, though no child

rushes to help me spread its artificial wings!

Our Down’s guy, however, does note

repeatedly that he’s on the nice list.