A Grace Prayer

Chasms open before your feet,
Offering odds you dare not meet,
Cold your breath in whispered prayer,
And old the faith which gets you there,
It will get you there.

And many beloved, and many friends,
Hearts well up as prayers ascend,
To warm the chill within your spine,
In hopes to share, the bread, the wine,
Broken bread, poured wine.

These prayers flow in a holy tide,
With you our friends they will abide,
That sweet healing be upon the wind,
That Ann's sweet families will mend,
That you all will mend.

And though parted with long goodbyes,
The gleam of tears within our eyes,
We grieve in hope but grieve we do,
And love, and walk, and pain with you,
Our beloved friends.

The broken bread, the poured wine,
And a Grace-Prayer be the signs,
To Adam, to Ingrid, and to you,
Of the fellowship that's ever new,
And renewed.

Amen.

____

Written for my friends, when I learned she was in a bad accident. Written primarily for him, who sat by her bed upheld by the prayers of many. I updated this once she had passed away some weeks later.

New Year in Old Times

Some years seem like death come slow,
A lovely bleeding anoints the grass,
The litany of woes that times bestow,
Each year feels dimmer than the last.
Though in pain lovely selves do grow,
All pray the coming year will surpass,
In sweet solaces.

In the mirth of December's eventide,
Are fragile crusty painted faces,
In prayer or drink, the year has died,
Bittersweet the cheers and embraces,
As the merriment's fateful subside,
All remain with the gifts and graces,
Of lonely places.

The Year's new hope waxes eloquent,
Sweetly the heart — full of resolve,
Soon the coals now burning ardent,
Cool as our lofty goals dissolve,
Hapless in fashioning an atonement,
Shadows of utopias again devolve,
To cadaverous cadences.

Some years seem like death come slow,
Yet grass grows through the fissures,
Regardless what the times may bestow,
There is love and healing that endures,
Though no shortage of pain nor of woe —
Will come a day of justice and closures,
And secure embraces.