Ever since I first read Pattiann Rogers’s poem “On the Way to Early Morning Mass” (in her 2001 collection Song of the World Becoming), I’ve been enthralled by it. But I haven’t tried to move through it slowly, line by line. That’s what I want to do in this post. So here’s the whole poem, with my responses along the way.

I entered the sea on the way
to early morning mass, walked
down deep along the rims of rock
coral caverns where my misstep
and consequent falling was most
slow and careful flying.

Stop! What? “I entered the sea” might mean the speaker just stepped into the water. But no: she’s deep enough in to visit “coral caverns.” Then:

I passed
over fields of slender, swaying
tubes of cuttlefish nests, supple
sheaves white and iridescent as pearl,
Cuttlefish, too, live in shallow waters. But then she
moved among the swift metal precision
of barracuda passion and shears.

Barracuda live in tropical oceans, so the speaker is pretty deep in. And yes—

A scatter of rain on the ceiling
of the sea above me appeared a sky-wide
scatter of stars struck to light
and snuffed in the same moment.

—deep enough that the sea seems to have a “ceiling” that’s like a star-scattered sky. With this we move to the poem’s second stanza:

I rose from the sea on the way
to early morning mass, walked along
the wet stones of the path, through
the sunken-blue-eyed grasses and cat
peas of the pasture gauzed with drizzled
webs, shrouds and shells of beeflies
and seeds clinging to my feet,

So she’s on dry land now (well, with the path’s stones wet)—and paying close attention to the kinds of grasses and insects she’s walking through—

along the two-rutted road, its frost-
fringed skims of water in shallow
delves, the fence ragged and tipsy
with wild rose, stripped blossom,
crusty yellow leaves black-spotted.

—and to other details on her route: the manmade (“the two-rutted road,” the “ragged” fence) and the natural (“frost-fringed skims of water,” “wild rose,” “crusty yellow leaves”). Then we move to the poem’s third stanza:

On the way to early morning mass,
I entered the soft-spun skull inside
the curlew’s egg,

Wait! She entered the skull inside a bird’s egg?! With this, we’ve entered with her into a surrealistic space.

heard the echo
of chimes in that electric cellar
of sun, entered the knot of the witch’s
pit, the sweet pulp pit of the lover’s
intention, the knot of felicity,
the pit of vagary.

So, more surrealistic spaces pile on, in two “knots” (“of the witch’s pit” and of “felicity”) and three “pits” (that witch’s, “the lover’s intention, “and “vagary”). As the speaker “enters” into these spaces, we readers depart from reality. Into, even, non-sense:

Nothing was blacker
fire than the government of summer
collapsed in the knot of the coal.

Yet suddenly, with the start of the poem’s fourth stanza, we’re back in a real world—of homey smells:

I passed once a fragrance
of strawberries and orange simmering
for jam, once lavender and cedar
as from a spinster’s trunk long
locked and suddenly opened,

—and of wind blowing a door shut, alarming a dog:

                             once
a sage wind down from the tops
of the pines. A door blew shut,
and a mongrel bitch on her chain
yipped to an empty window, circled
twice on her measured length.

And so we come to the poem’s final stanza.

On the way to early morning mass,
I followed the invisible corridor
of sky forged by swallows from river-
bank to bluff,

Wait! How do you follow an “invisible” corridor? And how is it “forged” by swallows?

followed the way
of my hand along the bones of his sleep
in the bed beside me,

Suddenly she’s in bed. But not for long:

followed the way
of my eye following the way of winter
rain down the icy runnels of budded
oak,

So we’re back in the natural world (though is it odd that the oak is “budded” in the midst of “winter rain” and “icy runnels”?)

and every remembered motion
of succeeding motion was providential,

And suddenly the tone and referents have changed. No more intricate details of nature or indoor smells. Now the speaker is “remembering.” And a new sort of term enters: the religious term “providential.” (Not surprising, since she has been all along “on the way to early morning mass.”) And for the poem closing lines, she stays in a religious space:

the way of making the way sanctum,
the proceeding the arrival,
the service continuing on
the continuing.

There’s “sanctum” and “the service” (the latter not necessarily religious, but seems so in the context).

There’s also a shift in the verb forms. Until now, they’ve been simple past tense: entered, walked, passed, moved, followed, etc. Now they’re unmoving, in the gerunds “of making,” “the proceeding,” “the continuing.”

She has arrived at early morning mass.

This poem, I should mention in closing, is typical of Rogers in its mix of images from the natural world with images from the spiritual, religious realm. I don’t know of another poet so dedicated to this particular dual vision.

Peggy Rosenthal has a PhD in English Literature. Her first published book was Words and Values, a close reading of popular language. Since then she has published widely on the spirituality of poetry, in periodicals such as America, The Christian Century, and Image, and in books that can be found here.