St Thérèse flew to Jesus, growing ever smaller
in her cell. Her childlike trust, her little ways

captured in her reflections of the natural world.
That tiny brown bird winging its way to God.

A single grain of sand in God's hourglass.
The martyrs’ dust she gathered at the Colosseum.

And the lowly violet dotting a field in Normandy,
or a chestnut falling to the convent ground.

A skiff sailing on an eternal,
shoreless sea. 

La petite soeur, with her dry, soft voice,
Her soul singing as if she were St Cecilia.