A Remembering Prayer

by Jeffrey Essmann | April 21, 2021 1:00 am

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This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Mary Margaret Freeman.                                                                                                 

A Remembering Prayer

Bless each day’s waking.

Keep yourself a silent house
that you may sort voice from voice.

Be faithful in prayer
for I will meet you there.

Don the apron of body and ghost
as you start your daily tasks.

Cross yourself with the duties of the day and let me,
the wage master, measure out your pay.

Fret not about what you are to eat or wear.

Open your door to the stranger.

Be tender in word and deed lest you
snap a reed or quench a spark.

Lavish the mercy on all I lavish on you.

Take simple things for consolation:
your two cats
the day rinsed by rain
a nap without clocks
a talk with a friend.

Hallow your nights with contrition and thanksgiving.

Let my heart beat in yours and yours in mine.

Remember that you are my servant
in life and in death.

Trust always in me.

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Mary Margaret Freeman’s poetry has appeared in The Christian Century, First Things, Outside the Lines and The Hillsdale Review. In 2017, she presented her long poem, “The Climbing Tree,” before a live audience at Scratch: Works-in-Progress at Living Arts of Tulsa, a community-engaged, contemporary arts non-profit. In 2015, she won second place for “Storm Headaches” in the Adult Creative Writing Poetry Competition, sponsored by the Tulsa City-County Library. She explores faith, doubt, and creation as infused and shaped by the Trinitarian God. She currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Source URL: https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2021/04/poetry-a-remembering-prayer/

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