Five Penances: Penance I
Lisa Russ Spaar is a Professor of English and Creative Writing in UVA's Department of English in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Professor Spaar's poetry collections include Vanitas, Rough; Satin Cash; and Blue Venus. Her recent novel is Paradise Close. She has edited several anthologies and books of essays, including the recent Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson. Her most recent collection of poetry is entitled, Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Professor Spaar is sharing her poems: Five Penances with readers of Thoughts From the Lawn.
Five Penances: Penance I
Penance I
This sadness feels Medieval,
locked in ice and dusk
with just enough murk
to keep us from telling
two like coins apart
and to send us scuttling home
to the lives we’ve earned,
with no toothed wheel
in God’s clock turret
to mark off and measure
our conflux of gain and loss,
but just enough light left
to blow our souls apart
with loneliness—that hair’s-breadth,
secondhand undertaking of the heart.
© Lisa Russ Spaar
From Blue Venus (Persea Books, 2004)
![TFTL Penance I artwork correct size](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Penance%20I_0.jpeg)
Department of Art in UVA's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
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