Sect

R. T SMITH

SECT

New Lebanon

At last, I have come to the still village

where the chaste Shakers worked and slept,

and here it is almost winter,

no more waste than scripture,

sheep sorrel still breath-taking

in the town square, junipers fringing the rim.

Beyond the museum threshold

a table is casting its shadow,

a row of chairs is suspended on pegs.

Quilts of immaculate pattern

enclose an even stitch. Hoe and loom and harrow,

the camphor sconce and single candle-

all bear the signature of Mother Ann's sect.

No extravagance. No dust.

The man-forked clothespins lie

beside a spartan psalter,

and I can almost hear their famous anthem

sanding the honey-gold rafters-the gift

to be simple, to be free.

A scythe could whisper it to corn.

Renegade Quakers, they took

the steel of adze and needle

into their dreams and made

what these displays label "craft."

I'd call it "exact devotion." Too pure

for this century, they shunned

the body's hungers and diminished, light

dying in the needle's eye.

Standing on a pine floor

sawn and shaved by reverent hands,

I can admire the gift of fervor,

the faith in healing by touch,

yet cannot envy their hard bargain

with God, their promise

to be virtue's monsters.

Outside again, beside the tidy fence,

where unruly mullein and shrift volunteer,

is it wind from junipers

and changing maples

or my own heart's edge

that makes me look back and shiver so?

I too have devoted too much to order,

the immaculate and severe.

If there's still time for forgiveness,

I will praise the imperfect

and blemished, beginning here.