Mary Morris

Poetry

Mary Morris has won the Rita Dove Award and New Mexico Discovery Award. Her work has been published in Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Blue Mesa Review, Gargoyle, Poet Lore, and Southern Humanities Review.  She has read her work at the Library of Congress, for the program, ‘The Poet and the Poem.’ Morris has lived most of her life in Santa Fe, NM where she can be contacted at Water400@aol.com

A Love Supreme

—John Coltrane


No coincidence that in Renaissance paintings
the angels are playing horns. They got that right.

It’s about the deep choice, the passion
one comes into after so much suffering,

digging in and turning out
a hymn without words,

about the evolution of his song—the angelus,
acknowledgement (I have wronged),

how love turns itself on,
finding resolution in the greater Master,

the one who saves you from yourself,
about pursuance (of this earthly heaven),

passages in psalms—notes,
translated through a horn—

a deep flower,
blue throat of the Lord.

I first listened to Coltrane’s music, A Love Supreme, when I needed it the most, as if it called to me. I was overwhelmed by its originality and depth. A Love Supreme is one of the most spiritual and intellectual works of art in its time, and is timeless. Containing four suites: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm, it is an epic poem of sound spilling over with mystery and an enormous contribution toward recovery for all humans.