May you sleep the sleep of my old dog,
soft, yielding and unquestioning.
May peace sift through your body
like a whisper, riding on
the white fur
of a dog's love.
May you receive the adoration
you need, the saintly love of
canines,
unceasing: forward, backward and right now,
ready to guide you through the
Mystery
and all the joy and grief dogs already understand
in every snuffle in their body.
J. Pratt-Walter, 2/16/2024
The old dog is snoring like an oboe. We have so much
comfort, so much gratitude.
But a large piece of wind
plays me the anguish of people like long-distance calls,
extinguished in a midnight vigil where no moon rises,
where daylight is an infinity away. Maybe hope rests,
tingling, in a different neighborhood, one of unknown
zip code. It’s harsh, isn’t it, to keep war’s terrible face
in mind as we share a magnificent meal of plenty
and grace as all the suffering in the world clamors below
every forkful in our home.
The sleeping dog
moans. If I were a person
of shallow religion I might quote
unfounded platitudes here about “working in mysterious
ways” or “everything happens for a reason”
as videos are blurred so all of us screen-watchers
drift past the horrors like a susurration of so many
starlings.
Can we grasp the entire picture? This is how we have to do
it
in America, with mouths full of unblinking compassion.
With holes in our collective stockings of serving ourselves
first.
With hearts the size of suffering nations holding onto every
beat toward peace.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023
Peace can slip into your doorway
when you stop holding on to your war.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023
After the church service,
the real holiness of the
altar is still alive
in the work of women picking up each Communion cup
with tiny glass clinks, washing and putting away,
in dusting the altar now stripped
of the comforts of the world,
and with the quiet sweeping up of
candle ash, dirt and dropped Body of Christ
crumbs from pilgrim and priest alike,
the peaceful hush
of ashes to ashes, dust to dust
with each
tender stroke of the broom.
J. Pratt-Walter, NaPoMo April 2022
Maybe the long beard of night
is held forever in the obsidian eyes
of a trapped rabbit waiting
for the wolf, holding in the frantic drum
of its heart the knowledge it must stop, yield
to whatever sanctity comes with
letting everything go, as we all must do someday.
I don’t know if this is true, but I feel
an echo somewhere inside me that says
when faced with imminent death,
a calm cloak will wrap me in sudden extreme
peace in knowing how the course of things
comes to this last unspeakable moment
where questions fall away like those who
escaped fire by plummeting willingly,
like the falling doves of the Triangle Shirtwaist girls
or the brave ones stepping off the edge of the Twin Towers
as their last fierce choice,
with a peace ringing in their heart and looking straight
into the pupils of Mystery claiming them back
as we all must do someday.
J. Pratt-Walter
