Please Pray For A Young Girl

The Why Of Where We Are

Our apartment is sweet, but tiny. We have tried (and prayed) to move elsewhere without success. I finally accepted that if God has us here, it must be for a good reason...

Earlier today I suddenly remembered that if I didn't send my mum-in-law's Easter card, it would be late. So I walked to the neighborhood mailbox, smelling yellow flowers along the way, such a delicate scent as to be almost indiscernible. And I thought about delicate things, and how each is powerful in its own way.

The mail had already gone. If I had known that, I thought, I would have taken it to a different box.

On a whim, I took a different route home. A ways down the street a little dog, a young man, and a young woman stood in a doorway. Another young woman sat weeping on the stairs. I passed by. But then I stopped. Should I go back, or not? I went back. The man and dog were gone. But the young woman was crying even harder and louder. She had left the steps, and was now standing with her face pressed up against the door. Her friend was trying to comfort her.

I said I was sorry to impose, but just could not pass by when someone was crying so hard. She couldn't take it, she said. Her boyfriend had left. She had tried, or maybe wanted to try, to kill herself. I said that every single person with any kind of heart has felt that pain at some time. I told her it is okay to feel deep pain, but it is not okay to punish ourselves for what someone else did. I told her she must promise to tell her friends whenever she feels suicidal. She promised.

Her friend assured me they would be all right. Maybe I didn't do enough. I never saw her face, or asked her name. All I know is she is thin, young and has long shiny brown hair. Please pray for her.

Third Poem of Morning (or Mourning)

the devil is a familiar chap
his voice like silk
Christ's voice is wood
and both can warm you
set afire
(siren song, jazz on the radio)

a small boy walks bundled
in a coat toward the well in morning
a fictional town
spun by Wendell Berry
(part nostalgia, part poetry)
if nostalgia is the devil
is poetry the Christ?

when the small boy is me
or a past self
the news comes on, a woman
poised to jump from a bridge
since one-thirty this morning
(seven hours suspended
between her death, our life)

water shines below
yet comes to her the smell of wood-smoke
both ephermeral, both vital
(which to embrace?)