Catholic Charities Maine

I spent the last two days at Catholic Charities Maine, "where everything's a dollar, but people are priceless." My favorite department is Refugee & Immigration Services. A Somalian woman with very little English and a babe in arms comes to me at the front desk and eventually I discern that she is here for an appointment with her case worker, Slobodan, a nice man from a former Soviet Republic and the only one of the staff who signs in and out with each trip to the bathroom. I imagine he is gifted at paperwork. I call Slobodan, he comes out, the two of them have a fluent conversation, and I am stunned by the efficiency and aplomb of their bureaucratic mingling.

But mostly I read from "The Cloister Walk" by Kathleen Norris. She says, "Poets understand that they do not know what they mean, and that this is a source of their strength." In other words, a poet can unburden himself of devotion to literal meanings if it interferes with his ability to be receptive to and communicate figurative meaning. The knowledge of poetry is closer to that of the feeling body than of empirical fact.