“How to Meet This Difficult Day” in Reformed Journal

by rosemerryt@gmail.com

Thanks to Reformed Journal for printing this poem on the prayers that find us when we forget how to pray. Printed on June 29, 2021.

How to Meet This Difficult Day

 

Today the prayer is words
I can’t yet find,

words that flit away
like spring juncos, like chickadees.

Today the prayer I wish for
is not the prayer that finds me—

less like the perfume of a fully bloomed flower
more like the dank and fusty scent of spring.

Some days when I forget how to pray,
if I listen with my whole body,

the world reminds me how what is used up, spent
is also a vessel for the holy,

as dry leaves become a nest,
as bare branches hold the sunrise.