The poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly lived for many years in Illinois, and that raw landscape never leaves her poetry. Nor does the wondrous strangeness of the poet’s Catholic faith, with its genius for seeing grace in everyday gifts.
It is particularly useful to imagine the vast plains of Illinois when reading this poem. The acres of grasses or farmland might represent a life — the poet’s life, or yours — where nothing out of the ordinary ever seems to happen, and God is only a remote person who “sends his tasks.” But then something does happen. Something not so shocking in this age of airplanes. A hot air balloon descends.
We know from the title of the poem that there is more to this balloon than nylon and propane burners. “The Visitation,” to a Catholic reader, will always signify Mary’s meeting with Elizabeth after the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In any life, a visitation has far more spiritual gravitas than a visit. The arrival of the hot air balloon is a metaphor for grace. As such, it is a gift.
The cornfield of the everyday
Kelly’s balloon comes down and we watch it, standing in that cornfield of the everyday. She sees its colors and describes them as sounds (“horns,” “clocks,” “bells”). This synesthesia (the merging of senses) is very poetic. But, similarly, one can almost imagine the “noise” of Mary’s angelic visitation in the angel’s light and colors — even if the angel, like the balloon, may actually have brought with him an extraordinary silence.
The balloon’s silence, in Kelly’s poem, bows the heads of corn. Of course, it is not really the silence that does that; it is the wind caused by the balloon’s descent. But, to the witness of this quasi mystical event, it seems as though the balloon’s portent is making nature bow down. Even the dog runs away. So only the narrator is left — or only you, as reader (Kelly specifically addresses “you” — she wants you to be there).
Three visitors
What greets you are three visitors “swinging / in a golden cage.” Like the three angels of Genesis 18:2, the three messenger angels of Revelation 14, and the popular depiction of three wise men in Matthew 2, these people seem to be harbingers of something enormous. Again, there is the confusion of the senses: The new light makes the road seem “wet.” As the balloon descends, you become “weightless.” You and the oak tree are almost caught in a “fiery burst,” but — like Hagar who sees the Lord and survives (Gn 16:13) — you are unharmed.
Yes, the experience, like so many we sail through unawares, is a gift. It is emblematic of those visceral brushes with God that change us. It is a reminder that God’s grace is there to be found, for those who watch for it, in the startling episodes of the everyday.
The Visitation
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
God sends his tasks
and one does
them or not, but the sky
delivers its gifts
at the appointed
times: With spit and sigh,
with that improbable
burst of flame, the balloon
comes over
the cornfield, bringing
another country
with it, bringing
from a long way off
those colors that are at first
the low sound
of a horn, but soon
are many horns, and clocks,
and bells, and clappers
and your heart
rising to the silence
in all of them, a silence
so complete that
the heads of the corn
bow back before it
and the dog flees in terror
down the road
and you alone are left
gazing up
at three solemn visitors
swinging
in a golden cage
beneath that unbelievable chorus of red
and white, swinging
so close you cannot move
or speak, so close
the road grows wet with light,
as when the sun flares,
after an evening storm
and you become weightless, falling
back in the air
before the giant oak
that with a fiery burst
the balloon
just clears.
