Goodness and Mercy

Goodness and Mercy

follow me every day,.

Their footfalls softly fall

As I make my way.

As darkness drops ahead

they lift their torches

to light my way,

comforting through nights

that threaten

To never go away.

I hear their voices

in children at play.

I feel their touch in hugs

from friends keeping loneliness at bay.

I share their laughs and smiles

with strangers on my way.

I am carried in their arms

by those who lift my fears away.

I accrue my many debts

but it is they who pay.

They carry me toward my fate

when I would wearily delay.

And, when it seems useless,

they remind me to pray:

“Thank you, Goodness and Mercy

for following me all my days.“

THE HOLY TRINITY

This Sunday the garden is my cathedral.

Where I can kneel un-masked

among hostas and ferns

and turn my gaze upon Creation,

Third person of the Trinity

Who sows the seeds of Christianity

Buried deep with the Second

in the fertile soil of the earth

prepared by the First,

Master Gardener of our souls.

I contemplate Second’s rising

as I ponder the resurrection

of every living thing that grows

after a long winter of cold and snow.

What prayers are these I offer

in the pantheon of gods of long ago?

The prayers of an immune-compromised 

Catholic unable to sit among 

un-masked rows of worshippers 

kneeling in too-few pews

listening to the Good News

spoken by priests within brick and mortar,

while I  kneel in the open-air garden.

My communion is deep if incomplete.

I sign the cross and sigh,

breathing in the energy of the Trinity,

which keeps my soul alive.

STOP SIGNS AND MIRACLES

Miracles happen every day

at each stoplight along the way.

Strangers meet unexpectedly

pausing quite respectably

to show one another every courtesy.

Without the light to make us pause

would we engage in such holy cause

as honoring the rights of others

before our own druthers?

We should not therefore, be surprised

when war is stopped before our eyes.

It can be done, it surely must pay

that we practice such moves every day;

in the simplest of ways, on every byway.

So, I sit at the light and silently pray

for the miracles to come today.

Every stop light and stop sign 

give me hope in the universal design

which I desperately implore.

Make war no more.

Angel Prayer

Do angels fear to tread

Mariupol‘s streets

lined with the dead?

Who else will guard

the skies that bled

upon her living souls ?

A single prayer is said,

asking skies to close

and ease the dread

of more to fall and fail

than bodies.

Listen well, angels of Ukraine.

Speak to angels everywhere

and pass along the prayer,

lest dictators leave their stain

on centuries of despair,

on the streets of Ukraine

and elsewhere.