"Lines for a Sidewalk Sanctified Where Matt Talbot Died"

One of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most charismatic poets, international speaker, mother of seven children, and a member of the Saint Albert's Chapter of Lay Dominicans, the late Mary Rudge (1928-2014) published multiple books of poetry, including For Ireland (2011). One poem from that volume is presented here:

Lines for a Sidewalk Sanctified Where Matt Talbot Died

On this ordinary place where anyone can walk,

sanctified by pain and faith, in the path of holy,

you, Matt Talbot, of the sidewalk,

can lead us.

The chain scars wrapping your body showed

how you bound it against cravings,

bound it to God,

and the rosary, a link of prayer,

beads on a chain,

these were the strengths you could claim.

You pit your slight self with the power of prayer,

strength of spirit,

against the centuries

of what medicine, science, sociology, psychology,

could claim about addiction—that the

body craves and craves again

against its will.

For the love of God and your own sake,

and the poor mother so hard pressed

to find food out of thin air to feed you,

when all you had belonged to drink,

all you had earned from hard labor was given,

you pawned vest and coat and boots,

pledged-away for next week’s wage

for now a swallow, desperate, captive,

unable to think free, needing to drink.

For your sake and your salvation,

you wrapped yourself in chains,

drug them on your body through life,

vowing to never be any other prisoner

but that of love of God, accept

the body God’s perfect gift to return to God.

Wrapped as a gift, falling in your chains

on the sidewalk,

Were you bead on the Holy Mother’s

Rosary, she who prays sinners be healed?

This is your legacy,

to all us little people who are so human:

lifetime of hard labor,

lifetime of little schooling,

lifetime of innocent wonder

at love’s praises, that

and beyond lifetime, that other

holy mother who clasped you to her

by chain of rosary, pulled you

into heaven and free.


Note:  One source of information about Mary is http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Mary-Rudge/373291096.