The spiritual disciplines associated with Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The poem below gets at how hard it is to bend ourselves to the first of these.
Prayer
by Marie Howe
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day
something more important
calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty
products, the luggage
I need to buy it for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the
garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own
breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like
complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
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