Daily Poem

I wrote this at the end of June in 2005, but it was missing something. So I pulled it out a week or so ago, and broke it into sections based around the monastic daily prayer cycle. I think it works.

Daily Poem

I. Invitatory

Charge our stiff backs with power
to roll into the morning.

II. Matins/Lauds

As we squint over the rims of our coffee
let our eyes see blessing in the quivers
of the leaves outside the window,
dappling the table with spatters
of the sun that rose too soon for our taste.

III. Terce

Let us want nothing more than
the feel of your presence under
our dry palms as we check our e-mail,
the light slide of the Spirit
like a finger along our jaws
directing our heads to turn
and putting love into our hands
so that we smile and tell people hello
and give our spare quarters
so others can use the vending machines.

IV. Sext

As we walk out to the parking lot
listing chores, call us to lift our eyes
to trace the boiling summer clouds
shaped like clay in your hands.

Put a song between our teeth and our tongues
like bread from the beaks of ravens
that we may taste praise
not of our making in our own mouths.

V. None

Teach us to feel above the twisting
in our intestines when our coworkers
call us “you people,” when our families
forget to phone, when the feral yellow cat
kicks over the tomato plants for the twentieth time,

for we know we have said “you people,”
we have refrained from words of comfort,
and we have kicked gravel at strays.

VI. Vespers

Let us take the stones we so readily gather
into our hands, and use them to line gardens.

Let us step upon the ruins of old orchard walls
and breathe moss in the air of the evening.

VII. Compline

For we know, O Lord, that today is a jar
of dark moving water
and the pattern of light on the surface
will run red over the backs of our knuckles
when we draw forth wine under your watching.

Teach us, then, as we drag ourselves
under covers and muffle the bedside light,
to close our eyes with clear vision.

Teach us to sink beneath our relief
at another day’s end, to stretch
toward your hands and to open our mouths.

Teach us to cry out, Amen.