Out of the Box Coaching and
WORKING WITH THE ENNEAGRAM, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.

Four:  first communion

Mother when I was so small I was still
you(only with big eyes)
you brought your fragile claws down
over the dinner wine
over the pastel ladies home journal tablecloth
over your husband's disciplinary roar
onto the sullen crystal dish.

Burgundy ran sideways
down through the curtains down through the floor
and over us the gentle lenten palm leaves rocked
green above the door. Daddy drove.
The emergency room door looked tiny from the parking lot.
I would never fit into it and I didn't. I stayed where I was
the way little girls do, behind the crystal window pane
of the station wagon waiting and tracing my name in the dew.
When you came out, all cotton fragile corners and dark smudges,
you had four wire ribbons
in your wrist, one for each year I was born.
I wanted to climb back into you.

Later you lay in another room
with the door open, flooded, silent
under daddy's big legs,
and I crawled myself
under the green fronds
into the kitchen's glassy secret mess
into the high sweet sacrament that stank of blood and wine
and I cut myself on a piece of your shining eye.

        Carolyn Creedon (personal communication)

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