Barbara Lydecker Crane
At times I find it refreshing to speak in a poetic voice that is not my own: I enjoy the opportunity for research, empathy, insight, and sometimes humor. In my poems I’ve “been” an old Inuit stone carver, a Muslim refugee of the future, a girl who grows to planetary heights, a rabbit reporter, a skeptical raccoon, and an irascible, imaginary irebird, among other guises I’ve tried on.
The epistolary form seemed apt for this imaginary young Shaker man (again a character very different from me) in his thinking through conflicting thoughts. As I wrote I began to feel as though I knew young Brede–his religious devotion, his awakening to love, and his quandary. At the end of the poem I could almost see Aaron quickly penning the words of his sudden conviction.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours in Faith, Aaron Brede
Dear Mother Ann: I'm writing by the light
of a candle end. The snores of the older men
are sounding 'round me just like saws tonight,
crosscutting ragged scratchings of my pen.
I've done my best at cutting birch and pine,
at smoothing lath for chairs, at hauling stone
for schoolhouse walls. I know the Lord's design
requires my improvement: I must atone,
and so I miss my rest and write to you.
At meals, at meetings, a dozen times a day,
I spy Eliza. Our faces burn, untrue
to rules. We love the Lord. But as we pray,
our eyes are dancing. Must I leave? She'd
follow. I'd choose Eliza over creed.
Note: Ann Lee, known as “Mother Ann,” was the founder of the 18th and 19th century Shaker religious communities, which required celibacy.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Since 2007, Barbara Lydecker Crane has published over 50 poems in print and online journals including Light Quarterly, Measure, Christian Science Monitor, Mezzo Cammin, Blue Unicorn, and 14 by 14, and in four anthologies. New poems are forthcoming in Umbrella and First Things. In 2011 she won First Prize in the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest for the poem included here. In 2012 White Violet Press published her first chapbook, entitled Zero Gravitas. Of Somerville, MA, she is also an artist.