My Mother Raised Me To Be A

I Prayed Hard And Only Gradually Became Aware That This Fierce Praying Was A Way Of Finding Prologue And Entrance Into My Own Writing. This Came As Both Astonishment And Relief. When I Thought God Had Abandoned Me, I Discovered That He Had Simply Given Me A Different Voice To Praise The Inexhaustible Beauty Of The Made World.

It Enclosed Us In Its Laceries As We Watched The Moon Spill Across The Atlantic Like Wine From An Overturned Glass. With The Light All Around Us, We Felt Secret In That Moon-infused Water Like Pearls Forming In The Soft Tissues Of Oysters.

To Describe Our Growing Up In The Lowcountry Of South Carolina, I Would Have To Take You To The Marsh On A Spring Day, Flush The Great Blue Heron From Its Silent Occupation, Scatter Marsh Hens As We Sink To Our Knees In Mud, Open An Oyster With A Pocketknife And Feed It To You From The Shell And Say, 'there. That Taste. That's The Taste Of My Childhood.'

But Even Her Demons She Invested With Inordinate Beauty, Consecrated Them With The Dignity Of Her Attention.

Her Laughter Was A Shiny Thing, Like Pewter Flung High In The Air.