Something We Don’t Pray For

 

And standing on the rim of the new year
with, undoubtedly, too much hope,
and at the same moment, too much worry,
like middle managers returning from a monastic retreat,
we gather at the mouth of this first Monday and genuflect
a kind of benediction over the months ahead, Keep them, we pray,
from the fox shark dimension of the human condition.

Perhaps this year someone siting up late arranging the clauses
of complex sentences, will stumble
upon a working description of the soul,
leading to an adequate unpacking of the heart, such that,
nothing of the self would stay hidden from the self.

It wouldn’t be pretty.
There’d be howls of, My God, so that’s what I’ve been doing!
There’d be a lot of journalling, stuff you wouldn’t want to read;
but then, we’d all be in it together.

There’d be a rush on white orchids, Etsy jewelry,
elephant plush cuddle buddies, wrapping paper,
and actual postage stamps.

Both Christianity Today and Psychological Review would publish
retractions on the functions of forgiveness.
Fox News and CNN would stop masturbating.

Presidents, four-star generals, chief officers,
would meet with committees of plants and animals
to tear up Exclusive Rights documents.

Narrative therapy counsellors would be in demand, a demand
exacerbated by said counsellors seeking their own counsellors
before re-hanging their shingles.

Where I am going, you cannot come, said Christ,
and true to his word, he left us
                                                          here,
then sent his ethereal partner, also a counsellor,
to keep us off bridges, or give us floaties.

Rumours persist she occasionally whispers
to midnight scribblers.
Then again, persistence is in the nature of rumours.

But apparently, so I’ve heard, there’s a painter who’s been listening,
who’s painting with gesticulating sweeps,
and grand flurries of colour,
a diptych:
It’s what we don’t pray for that breaks us.
It’s what we can’t pay for that saves us.