You Saw What You Saw

I was nine or ten,
my childhood Catholic to the core.
Walking home from school alone,
I crossed the railroad tracks,
and saw a bush
burning orange.
I knew the Moses story,
a voice emerging from a burning bush
to deliver divine directive.
The burning bush by my smalltown tracks
got my entire attention
but it didn’t fit
in what I could perceive as real.
I took it in but buried its magic,
making my stunned way home.

I told my best friend what I’d seen,
and I think that she believed me,
but then I stashed the experience
so deep for a swift sixty years.
that I had forgotten it.
Now arrives the time to parse
the apparition of my burning bush.

Surely it was a calling,
a Bridget missive fiery in the air,
summoning me fiercely
to a holy vocation as wordsmith.
My body, the bush where the poetry burns.
My work, the words of flame
that cannot be consumed.
I speak back through the years
to the girlchild by the railroad tracks:

You saw what you saw!
Your vision was keen and real.
Lone as your path
home from school,
you will ever walk outside the main,
in a life that’s rich with love.
The promise you made at 16,
not to grow old at heart –
that promise you shall keep.
And by the close, no longer will you hide
any of the magic
that burns within your breast.

©Susa Silvermarie 2023