Stooti's Poem of the Day

at the altarpiece of Saint Teresa No need to be coy— you know what she’s doing And so did Bernini, when he found Teresa in the full-throttle of her divine vision, caught her at it, carving this surrender so fluidly you expect the impossible: for her tang to swell up, ripe as seafoam, from the gulf of her flushed and falling figure. Perhaps this is how God comes to us, or should come to us, all: the bluntly and beautifully corporeal at prayers in the Sunday school of pleasure. Why shouldn’t He come to us as He did to Teresa? A saint on her back— a girl tearing open the gift He gave her?