I enter the church at four o'clock
Lenten Prayer
Photo By: Flickr/Daniel Maat
----for some of my favorite priests
I ‘d been dreaming about a prayer—
words now forgotten—
in one of those dreams that repeats itself
in a contiguous loop
like that of a scratched phonograph record,
needle stuck in a grime-filled groove.
The simple prayer seemed doable.
And by doable, I mean, even when life gets
complicated with the washer broken, the in-laws
mad, the brightest star fading, burning out,
about to fall from the sky.
Suddenly I woke to the wildest calm:
a backyard of sunshine and trees.
I recall from scripture a blind man
begging for sight. And in the homily,
the priest admitted, It’s not always easy
to be a priest.” I rose from my bed and fell
to my knees. I’ll be praying for priests today.
And for the “blind.”
About the Author
A former English teacher, Helen Losse is the author of ten collections of poetry, including A Flower More Enduring (Main Street Rag, 2021). Her poems have been anthologized in Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina, and Kakalak 2014, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for a Best of the Net award. She is Poetry Editor Emeritus for The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and a former Associate Poetry Editor for Kentucky Review. She is married and has two grown sons. A Christian her entire life, Helen entered the Catholic Church on Holy Saturday in 2015 to grow closer to Jesus.
Social Media links:
Blog: Windows Toward the World https://helenl.wordpress.com/
FB: https: https://www.facebook.com/HelenLosse/
MSR Bookstore: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product-tag/helen-losse/
