Canticle of the Night Path. Jennifer Atkinson

      It is like the ten girls who took their lamps and went to wait in the dark all night for a husband.

      All grew drowsy: five blew out their lamps and slept, four trimmed their wicks to brighten their flames—they read to pass the time—and one stood up, snuffed her lamp, and walked out into the night.

      The stars, unchallenged by lamplight, shone. In the air a rich fragrance of figs. The one bride plucked a ripe fig and ate.

      All night the bridegroom never arrived. In the morning he called at the house of the wise and foolish. Look! Here is your bridegroom! Come out! Open!

      But nine girls had risen, as always, at dawn to draw water. They were away at the well. The tenth, having returned from the well before daybreak, spoke through the closed door. Truly, I tell you, she replied, I don’t—none of us knows you.

      Canticle of the Cherry Tree:

      from The Parables of Mary Magdalene

      It is like a single cherry tree, surrounded with fences and growing in an orchard of cherry trees.

      The fruit of the one tree is no redder or less red than the other trees’ fruit. Where its bark has cracked, sap oozes out, forming amber beads that harden in place, mid-drip. In this it is like the other trees.

      The separate tree’s dusty leaves hang listless and bent, as do the leaves on the unfenced trees. All the cherries glow with late sun like jelly already put up in the jar.

      Under the round shade of the fenced-in cherry, tall grass bleaches to hay, uncut and untrampled.

      Come quick little foxes. Magpies come quick.

      Canticle with Chipped Plates