A Previous Century’s Sabbath-day Sect
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
“a place just right”
Sabbath Day Lake Shaker Village: Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village – New Gloucester, Maine | America’s only active Shaker Community
They sit with backs securely set against
The present and the future, with firm eyes
Obsessing on the past, that past unfenced,
Except it cannot see tomorrow, lies
Behind these folks and also this today
Is blinkered from them. This is like a train
Is moving forward normally but they
Have set themselves to use a mirror’s tain
To look at passed things only. Engine’s force
Is clueless where it goes, but wheels go on
Through now; and then to days ahead. “Of course,”
You think, but these heads only see what’s gone.
They have a prophetess and what she wrote
Is what they murmur. That is what they quote.