Make A Prayer Of Your Day
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Only those poems that strike lightning
burning the house down or that sweep away
all you have lived for in a tsunami wave
have a chance of being heard
because there are no words except
those you speak to yourself repeating
your life back into its old form.
I wrote this poem while on a writing retreat with Kim Rosen on the Hawaiian Island of Kona in 2015. It was partly inspired by a burned house a short ways down the road path from the retreat center where we met. Flower decorated crosses were planted in the burnt remains likely meant to commemorate those who died there.
The poem reminds me of how easily we fall into the slumber of our day-to-day life. We get caught up in our take-for-granted world and, no matter how pleasant or painful, tend to repeat the same patterns over. Perhaps that is why we make and need drama. The dramatic has a better chance of getting through than the everyday and commonplace. Yet, it is in the commonplace and everyday in which our lives are lived. Poetry has the power to penetrates the veil and re-imagine our daily lives from a soulful perspective. Everyday objects and events have life and a spirit. Our shoes then hold the memory of the ground we walked.
Imagine the objects around you ii your home have a life. Pick one and let it speak to you, let it share its story, or simply listen to what it knows or wants.
Few give voice to prayer except
when on the brink and all is lost.
Train yourself, instead, to make
a prayer of the day and give
all your moments over to poetry.
Then, you will come to love
those poems that come to you
so quietly you don’t know when
they arrived appearing as if
from the inside, as if the words
arose from your own heart or from
the author of another lifetime.
Your heart will dance at the sight
of well-worn shoeseven when they sit
on the floor with the utter patience
of one who has a purpose
and waits to serve it.
Your heart will sing with the familiar feel
of the door latch you turn to let yourself
in or out of your life.
And your morning cup will be
the taste of a new day, which you
can sip slowly enough to be the author
of lightning strikes and tsunami waves
coming to you as if from another lifetime.
© Nick LeForce, All Rights Reserved
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