This is a guest post that comes from the World Community for Christian Meditation . All rights to this poem belong to
John J. Keohane
Tag: religious poem
‘Our Daily Bread’ – Or Keeping Watch over ‘The Hours’
‘Our Daily Bread’ – Or Keeping Watch over ‘The Hours’
(i)
You give us this day
Our daily bread
At the morning hour.
Early morning scene –
Where’s a camera!
Fog ahead
From the night-time
Falls
Of rain.
A backdrop
Against a vista before us
Amber hues of a light
Blanketing thinly
A field of ryegrass,
Where a gangly foal
Followed its mother,
Their hides
Coated with the glistening
Yellow sheen of
The finalising dawn.
Our daily bread
Of beauty for
The breakfast hour.
(ii)
Our daily bread
Of an hour during the day.
A musician
Attuned to our people
Asks the question:
“Could you not
take communion down
to Hetty and Bart?
He looks
Wobbly
You know!”
And wobbly
He was
As he came forward,
Bandy legs
Like shuffling pins
A slow
Deliberate
Swaying swing.
When asked after
I was taken in
By the deep pools,
Blue as fathoms of sea,
Of his old eyes
Above a faint white wisp
Of whiskers
Dotted on his pink skin.
A visage, I think,
I really truly saw
For the first time.
“I want to still walk
up while I can.”
His polite and firm
Smile in word and picture
Clearly expressed
A residue of pride
In a body intent
Also on aging.
Oh, that face!
The courage
In his faltering steps.
Greek tragedy
Knew not
The magnitude
Of his great
Journey
Shuffling up a aisle.
Our daily bread
Of fortitude and
Faithfulness
At hours during the day.
(iii)
Our daily bread
In the hours of the afternoon.
A young husband
Shops,
Weaving among the
Rows of fruit and vege
Bordered
Not in garden beds or pots
But displays
Under strategically designed
Supermarket lights,
While his wife
Full of the promise
That late pregnancy
Pronounces
Waits for her
knight’s return
for them to resume
their long road trip
o’er the mountains
and down,
down,
towards the sea
where waves may
wash away
the dust
of their weariness.
Our daily bread
Of com-passion –
suffering with –
in the mid afternoon
hours of heat
with a long journey to go.
You give us this day
A feast
Of wonder and
Practical virtue
Among the people
And hours
Of
‘our day’.
Simon C.J. Falk 18 October 2015
In recent days, one of the finest blogs I have the privilege of reading, ‘The Bookshelf of Emily J‘, published a post on the people in your neighbourhood. Please check it out as it is a beautiful post about the goodness in ordinary places like the places we each live in. The poem in this post of mine is a response to Emily’s fine post. Names have been changed. It uses examples to draw on the Christian ‘Lord’s Prayer’ (also known as the ‘Our Father’) and the old Christian custom of remembering to keep the hours of the day in praise and prayer.
Simon's still stanza 