I am always searching for new poets to read and thrilled when I find one that really stirs my heart and shows a slice of another world that coincides with this one, albeit unseen. The veil between the two whips in the wind, gossamer and beckoning, welcoming to those that have eyes and ears to enter. Prose poet, Annie Dillard, is one of those writers that takes you there. I’m captivated by every word. Although an old book now, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” was life changing. Miss Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1975.

Dillard’s writing first opened my eyes to the idea that chapters in books or sections can be, not just soul shaking and profound but living color encounters, even ethereal, from which you lay the book down and endeavor to consume—spiritually and mentally— to process, not the words but the experience stretched before you, not in simple ink and paper, rather in the jeweled mechanics of another world that turns this world.

Tinker Creek did that for me and other books of Annie’s. I want to call her that because I befriended that stranger as I ventured with her into the inner works and very edges of the world as an explorer/scientist/poet/philosopher/ to wonder with eyes and mouth wide open—to gasp—to weep—to praise the glory of creation and the holy Creator. Dillard also pulls the science of the universe together with the metaphysical world along with her Anglican biblical background, extensive reading, and interest in Jewish traditions. It makes for marvelous, broad, and heart ascending reading.

The day after I finished Tinker, I encapsulated my thoughts into a poem. My ode to Annie Dillard, a pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I posted this poem yesterday but without explanation which I have added here. I have also added a newer version of yesterday’s poetic offering. It is still a work in progress. 

Dust and Glory

I was born where things corrupt—in the slow decay of dust, where the leaves of life loosen, heave, and fall, and the earth receives without protest.

I have watched that descent into the silent ground. Corruption is nearly soundless, yet it moans beneath and upon the surface—a quiet undoing that gnaws away until

the returning begins.

“From dust you are…”

the words linger, unfinished—as if the soil remembers more than endings. Beneath decay, a faint pulse—not ruin, but groaning.

“For the creation was subjected… in hope.”

Hope—threaded through rot, braided into darkness, not born there, only passing through. I have seen it—in the fragile shimmer of a fallen wing, in the vanishing glint on water, in the stubborn green rising through damp, shadowed forests and forgotten ruins.

Beauty in corruption and refusing burial.

The prophets spoke of dual pathways, two fires within the heart—one bent inward, one reaching toward the Holy.

“Korban”—the ultimate blood smeared sacrifice—the only offering that draws us near to the Holy One.

I am not cast away, but called—to the altar and flame, where corruption is not hidden, but offered. I come fallen, as dust, fractured—breathing, yet forgetful of my Source. A vessel cracked enough to see through. 

“Sown in corruption…”

I feel it in my bones.

“…raised to incorruption.”

A promise not yet worn, yet already alive. For the Holy One does not call decay beauty, yet neither does He turn away.

He enters. And there—in the minute and the vast, on the trembling edge of all things—His image flickers: the breaking,

Christ, not only robed in glory, but hidden in the small, the nearly overlooked.

A treasure in an earthen vessel like me—it captivates my heart.

So I stand, not outside the tension, but within it—

dust and glory—

braided together like a living, breathing ancient tallit. My life born of dust, bent toward corruption, yet awakened to glory, summoned into ceaseless prayer. I linger between

the porch,

the altar,

and the garden—

weeping,

leaping,

dancing

for the joy before me

to live in His Temple

and to inquire of His Beauty.

Bonnie Saul Wilks