Pastoral Care

by Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo

Between the touch tones 
and the two-days-widowed voice;
Between when fingers press to palms 
the wood of the altar rail 
and weighted drop of bending knees: 

Plunge: this breath 
I forget to notice I take,
then sink down. Pressure 
closes around the body yet
the body unfurls
from cannonball entry 
here. Holy
where everything 
sounds 
like insides.

To surface, hang 
up the phone, or rise,
walk back to the altar.  
I reach across my clavicle 
to unsnap, lift off 
the robes, if this time 
there’s been robes. 
I try another kind of breath, 
remember how a woman used 
to wash her hands with salt
to rinse away any visions or 
pain my muscles 
had offered her palms.

::

Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo is a writer, educator, faith leader and caregiver. Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in Vita Poetica, Fare Forward, Literary Mama and the Gumball Poetry Machine at The Stacks Coffeehouse in Portland, Oregon. Her debut collection, Incarnation, Again, was published by Wipf & Stock in 2022. She lives in Portland, where she serves as the Canon for Spirituality Education and Arts at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

Image: Grant Whitty

ID: Green and white robes.