Sunday, August 29, 2021

Paraklysis

 

I know you’re spying over me.

A little here; a little there, like a fly

that keeps showing up

in the car three hours away,

at mass while little bells ring,

and at poolside while typing.

I see your wings in each pass.

So I thought nothing of how I lost 

two hundred plus paper cutlets

after pulling out one thin slice 

to place in the fishing basket. 

I just figured you knew better than I

about distributing to those here in need













Saturday, August 28, 2021

Past Tents

 



                                                I love you


                                    I wish the world loved you

                                        when love had liberty 


    to care for the sick, the suffering, and those held captive by it


                                            I wish your husband loved you

    when love vowed before its creator 

    

to endure in sickness and health, and even through death


I wish I loved you, too

when love had arms

           

             to wrap around and squeeze


                            even with empty arms















Walking children into heaven




Walk with me, you say


Every mile is worth revisiting


Twenty years of life now gone


But I am with you


That note under the front cover was for you


All the poems and dreams


Splashed across pages, were for you too


Even to the completion of the age











Sunday, August 8, 2021

Tonsured for Christ

 


In the midst of the congregation the praise of Christ is hymned because of you, O Reader Joseph. Through your life at the kliros, the humble path to exaltation is made manifest, illumined with the transcendent beauty of angelic melodies. By your constancy and loyalty, standing in praise and prayer, the way of salvation is guided and guarded for us. In keeping vigils, you brightened the path leading to our unending joy. Therefore we celebrate your light-giving and holy memory, and we cry aloud in one accord: Intercede with Christ our God that our feet would be made to stand dutifully in all divine allotments of service, with our hearts stationed on Him within the Great Congregation of ineffable praises, so that we, too, would be kept from straying onto evil paths and all attain the unity of faith and the knowledge of God’s unapproachable glory.