Our Lady of the Rock

And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarah’s maid, whence camest thou and whither wilt thou go?—Genesis 16.7-8 It wakes Sarah-the same bright yellow dawn as on the boat that brought her and coaxed her, onto deck to watch white cliffs, the horizon. She opens windows wide over the street: these jostling roofs, the abbey: spiked towers on the hill, its shrieks out-stripping the swallows. To stretch above and reach to wry brook-beds, is watching close: a man’s step (the bats squeal evening and night: always the flapping wings). The café where her sister sits; Hagar at table, her black hair tied round her head, coiled in feint of sleep, proving her white bare neck. Notice the flash of white cotton, the glare at the window and how these shutters close. The serene dun lulls, gifts Sarah’s head with coils. Then Sarah at table, still the cherub. Their mother watched her mouthing, jawing in the choir’s front row. Hagar gets up to leave; turning her face to the hotel she finds inside the room is clean and bare-the book and window agape. Past the abbey, the grass, grows wild, strands caught in cross-hatched breezes, tips swirling: black and white dots between TV channels. Angels climb ladders to the spire. Sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, dozing like Jacob, cold was creeping through her dress. The last mural is crumbling: a woman lifting dish to boy’s mouth and the other watching with bow and bright shaft. "Hagar and Sarah”, he said in English and the rhyme of steps followed her outside.