Enclosure
Jessica Powers  (1905-1988)
 
Gypsy by nature, how can I endure it—
This small strict space, this meager patch of sky?
What madness once possessed me to procure it?
And deed it to myself until I die?
 
What could the wise Teresa have been thinking
to set these bounds on even my little love?
This walling, barring, minimizing, shrinking—
how could her great Castilian heart approve?
 
And yet I meet the morrow with composure.
Before I made my plaint I found the clue
and learned the secret to outwit enclosure
because of summits and a mountain view.
 
You question, then, the presence of a mountain?
Yet it is here past earth’s extravagant guess—
Mount Carmel with its famed Elian fountain,
and God encountered in its wilderness.
 
Its trails outrun the most adept explorer,
outweigh the gypsy’s most inordinate need.
Its heights cry out to mystic and adorer.
Oh, here are space and distances indeed.
 
(1944)
 
Reflection
 
Hello there! Corinna Laughlin here. I’m the Pastoral Assistant for Liturgy at St. James. Over the years, parishioner Scott Webster and I have offered many literary evenings at the Cathedral, reading and discussing stories and poetry. Since we can’t do that right now, we’ve decided to offer a poem a week, virtually. Scott will read the poem, and then I’ll offer a short commentary. The first poem I’ve chosen is “Enclosure,” by Jessica Powers, also known as Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, a Carmelite nun who lived from 1905 to 1988. I think her experience of “enclosure” will resonate at this time when so many of us are confined to our homes.  Here’s Scott reading Jessica powers’ “Enclosure.”
 
Thank you, Scott!
 
The poem begins with a question—“gypsy by nature, how can I endure it?” Jessica Powers was a bit of a gypsy. She grew up in an Irish Catholic household in rural Wisconsin but after studies at Marquette, she moved to Chicago and later to New York City at the age of 32. She spent five years in the New York literary scene – writing for the New York Times and publishing poetry. Then, in 1941, she moved back to Wisconsin and entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Mother of God in Milwaukee. Jessica Powers became Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit.
 
Carmelites are cloistered, which means they do not leave the monastery grounds, or “enclosure,” except for essentials, like doctors’ appointments. Visitors are traditionally seen at a distance, through a grille or screen. In these days of sheltering in place and social distancing, we are all getting a taste of Carmelite enclosure! 
 
Jessica Powers wrote “Enclosure” about seven years after her entrance into the monastery. In the first part of the poem, she humorously expresses the frustration that comes with being enclosed—“walling, barring, minimizing, shrinking.” What, she asks, could she have been thinking? What could St. Teresa have been thinking?
 
But in the second part of the poem, Powers answers her own question. How can she endure enclosure? Because God is present. She draws on the rich imagery of Carmelite spirituality—mountains, wilderness, flowing water—to point towards the rich interior landscape which is always accessible, even—or perhaps especially—when we are “enclosed.”

Corinna Laughlin