I fulfilled a life-long dream in 1988 when I visited Ireland, the source of Evelyn’s and my common roots. I was dumbfounded to be in a cottage at noon and see a copy of Jean-François Millet’s painting of ”The Angelus” appear on the TV screen, accompanied by the sonorous tolling of a bell. Everyone in the cottage stopped in his tracks and bent head in prayer.
Angelus Bell
The sound
Is white and silver.
Like the ebb of dawn.
It whirls itself
With harmony
Through curling air,
And tinkles chords
In empty trees.
It climbs the mist
That cloud-dust paints
Upon pale space.
Its echo
Is a shining shadow
In the cathedral,
Calling the faithful
To meditation.
Evelyn Coffey
Today read another insight into Evelyn at http://www.booksforwallsproject.org/
Every evening at 7:30 the bells from Gesu Church around the corner from Evelyn's Detroit flat at 17343 Warrington would ring the notes to "Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire". From the chair on her front porch, Evelyn would watch the children on the block come to their mothers, those bells signaling the end of the day, harbinger of baths, and pajamas, and bedtime stories. She would smile, her eyes on them and her fingers on her rosary beads.
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