An Anchorite’s Catechism   No one forced this on me — no one but God. What is God? God is the perpetual gloom of this cell, radiant, and when the priest nodded   to the mason, who snuffed the sun brick by brick, I prayed to be forever awed by that radiance, by that darkness. In sickness   and despair, my prayers for certainty are answered with holy silence and tricks of the devil, doubts, locks without a key.   When those I’ve prayed for in this tiny room find the mason’s work undone, will they see a broken prison or an empty tomb?     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont July 2021