A poem for Advent

(Sorry I missed yesterday; I plead child-home-from-daycare.)

from "Mysteries of the Incarnation"

"She Said Yeah"

The land lies open: summer fallow, hayfield, pasture.  Folds of
cloud mirror buttes knife-edged in shadow.  One monk smears
honey on his toast, another peels an orange.

A bell rings three times, as the Angelus begins, bringing to
mind Gabriel and Mary.  "She said yeah," the Rolling Stones
sing from a car on the interstate.  "She said yeah."  And the bells
pick it up, many bells now, saying it to Mechtild, the barn cat,
pregnant again; to Ephrem's bluebirds down the draw; to the
grazing cattle and the monks (virgins, some of them) eating
silently before the sexy tongue of a hibiscus blossom at
their refectory window.  "She said yeah."  And then the angel left her.

--Kathleen Norris, Little Girls in Church