Her christening

Christian Century, July 17, 2002 by Hugh Ogden

   Her christening

   (for my granddaughter, Amelia)

   Talk about curving when the Reverend
   bent over to touch a palm to her forehead,
   reached out in a human arc and splashed
   water over her white pinafore dress,
   spoke as he curved with his cupped
   hand dripping brook-water that runs
   church-side down through Cotton Hollow
   to the river, said what flows from
   gravity welcomes the newborn into
   the community and carries the centuries
   into a sun-washed Sunday morning and
   if you believe or don't they're still
   waters from which life comes, they're
   still the future in which the past
   pours beside mill-ruins through a
   glacial-carved gap, washing our lives.