A General Confession

It is true
that once I wrote a poem
on a vicar’s Roman collar
        while he was still wearing it

but let it be noted
and mark my statement
                on the wall

        I was always a true
                daughter of the Church

When I die
          put a Rosary in my hand
          and a new fountain pen
          pray hard
and help me write my
          way out of this

Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, portrait by Roman Loranc. Photograph made March 14, 1999 at Los Banos wetlands preserve during a break in the filming of Chris Simon’s Down an Old Road. Despite her mother’s strict Baptist tradition and upbringing back in the Oklahoma Territory, shortly after the McDaniel family arrived in California, Wilma converted to Catholicism at seventeen years of age. Years later, she joined the Il Poverello Fraternity of Secular Franciscans in Fresno, California and remained an active participant in secular Franciscan gatherings and retreats until poor health interfered later in life. A General Confession appeared as the last poem Wilma included in Who is San Andreas: poems to survive earthquakes ©1984, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel.    (back)