for Benedict Sheehan
1. Prayer for entering
pray it enters, then.
leave a door open
if not a seat, for joy.
in the glad pursuit,
joy is a choice,
by you and your living.
set a table in your
largest room, prepare
for the festive ministry
of enjoying. treat your
smallest spaces like
your grandest feasts,
for no joy is smaller than—
it fills each vessel
with equal abundance.
tend to the glory
of what enters,
and makes a life.
and hope to raise it
as a full and easy glass,
toasting to its presence.
II. Praise for Arriving
we sang in circles
bungled bugling
our endless song
in an instant
blown back in rings
of smoke, that then
vanished, the semaphore
signals—conducted
hands, a text of gesture
bearing the weight
and fruit of creation.
making a meal of the garden.
the fumbled first time
of almost-lovers and
never-again-strangers.
once, this tune was yours.
briefly, it was just ours.
now, alive, it belongs to the world.
III. Thanks for Having Been
solitude is a state
of being alone, a conscious
omission; an absence.
loneliness is a feeling
of isolation, an unwanted
exclusion; a lack.
lack is chosen under duress
or not at all—settled instead
by the pain of others.
I cried out, and with
good fortune, but
once it was over
I wondered aloud if
the world would erode
around us—”the ruines”
of a broken World,”
made plain when free
of smoke and tears.
tell me, then, why do I
stand among ruin
and give thanks
for my own pain?
I followed my joy out
into the night, and sing on
as dark as it is, sometimes,
one is alone in life,
but never alone in living.