I had some trouble with this poem, which accounts for the space between the first poem, in this Liturgy for the New Year series, and this one. But the poem I had written began to fall apart. This happens. Sometimes a really great idea (or what you think is a great idea) just isn’t and sometimes, which is more heart breaking, a truly great idea somehow eludes you. The more you try to capture it the more it falls apart. As frustrating as this is, slowly I’m learning to just let it go.

But, I still had a poem to write about prayer. It’s not the poem I thought would fit here in the liturgy as Prayers of the People, but it’s the prayer for me and I am one of the ‘people’ after all. Perhaps you’ll find something it in too.

Dear God,

I couldn’t write this poem
about prayer; the draft I had
fell apart, like so many prayers
I’ve prayed: give me this, fix that.
The poem was brittle and shattered
under the pressure of revision:
a process that works a line or a word
over and over, weighing words, 
rejecting words, making sure each 
is strong enough to carry 
the weight of the longing.
Often, the right word once found,
reveals a longing
which is deeper down
and truer than it began.

A poem can grow me.

Teach me to pray, I ask
and you say, begin like this:
inviting me to pray
over and over for whatever
concerns me, desperate or trivial
and in the persevering
you somehow do the work
of revision on it – opening
a prayer strong enough
to carry the weight of the longing
You have for me to know you,
which beyond the ask,
is the deeper down longing
I pray in my prayers too.

I imagine then,
a prayer can grow me too.

© 2019 – Laurel Archer

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