Author: Elizabeth Maynard

What story will you tell
about this season
this little life
here on the threshold?

Comedy
Tragedy

Place your hand on the gate
lift the latch
feel it swing open and away
place both feet on the stone
that marks your way

Forward

In a life of excessive privilege
even my complaints seem ridiculous
Ah, poor me and my disappointments
So often well-intended but oblivious
it is all so much
White noise

I see from your note you have arrived in
the land of perpetual disappointment

No matter how green and rolling
the curves of these hills

How warm and fine the earth
as you run your palms along it

You are already convinced 
there is nothing to enchant you

As much as I have loved you
I cannot wish you were here

Met too often by silence
I have given up prayer
marvel that I once believed
if only I was good enough
smart enough
quiet enough
I might be spared

What am I to do now
that I think I know better
have decided I am too wise
to believe in something
more miraculous than this?

You sound like home
breath rising and falling
tone echoing
in this unfamiliar space

You look like home
the hues and angles
your gait
clear as your name

Your touch is home
twin fingers trace
along my wrist as we, strangers
miss each other here

How do we mourn the stories
we hoped for but never lived?

The children we longed for
but never conceived?

The verse, melodies
imagined but never voiced?

How do we exhale the never-was
to breathe the what-might-be?

Today I count these faults
innumerable
varied
every shape and color
ways I came up short
or did too much
When is memory burden
when blessing?

The loyalty of mice
reminds me to pay attention
to neighboring creatures
rescind my assumption
that kindness is human
check my daily reliance
on the illusion of superiority

As a child small and trembling
assailed on every side by muchness
my father's rage, my mother's need
I wrapped myself in your soft wings
and with my thumb's comfort
caught breath and sleep

This prayer is the same
in every language:
the rising and falling
the pausing and pleading

I have heard it in a strange church
and known it immediately

Holy, holy, holy one
first inhabitant of paradise
more perfect than us
make here like there
put all of this in order
earth and heaven alike
feed us
forgive us
teach us to mend and to heal
for we need you to be more
powerful, more permanent
than we know ourselves to be