Because three Sisters work here, one named Engracia which means full
of grace, here at the shelter where people come with blisters and red
eyes after walking through the desert and being driven back again,
because I am reading Sophocles, how he writes, That was to be a great/
inaugural time of sorrows, and what I see is inaugural,
and there are horses on the hills above the apartment building where
I stay,
and I am teaching the Sisters English and Engracia laughs when she
tries to speak. She tells me about saber and conocer, the verbs that
mean to know and to be familiar with, that have two different meanings,
and in the evening piano music from a radio comes down the steps and
I go up in a black dress through the yellow light to give the lesson.
Engracia asks, and you, what are you looking for?
and tells me a story about Samuel and Eli, Eli, variant form of Elias,
meaning lord my god, how Samuel was a boy and a servant to Eli, and
at night Samuel heard someone call his name, and went out to Eli,
thinking it was Eli calling, but Eli said, go lie down
and the third time Eli said, it must be God, when you hear it again,
come out and say, Speak, your servant hears you—
I’m coming back here to stay is what I write to my friend,
and later read the rest, how the message God gave Samuel was that Eli
would be killed, and all his sons, and Samuel gave the message to Eli,
and Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and let none of his
words fall to the ground.
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Margaree Little’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Bloom and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and has worked as an assistant editor in the program’s archival collection of craft lectures. Originally from Rhode Island, she lives in Tucson, Arizona.
