Thursday 23 April 2009

Short prayer

(a poem of late January 2009)
Some days
it is enough
to pray
for a short time.
This is not the day
when, almost unbearable,
I grit my teeth
and wish it were over.
Those are the days
when I must spend
the impossible hour
knowing
that feeling you are not there.
recognising
that I am barely present
is the surest sign
that this is it.

But some days, like today,
I could sit here
for ever
and shouldn't,
because today
it is OK
you are there.
It has not been too hard.
And so I go
I do not need to struggle.
for that, today.
I can give thanks
whilst also knowing
that it is the days of struggle
of pain
of impossibility
that are what it is all about.
But today is not onesuch
and so I go

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is right. And then thre are teh days where you struggle for a whole hour to stay awake for more than a minute at a time, and keep coming to over and over to say the word before falling into sleep again...oh the struggle it...and yet those too are the days to stay.