Thursday (no. 1).
On Thursday, in Christ Chapel, I knelt down,
and gazing upwards, begged my God for help:
“not for myself,” I said into the space,
“but for my friends, and family, and…”
soon
I realized that my list was far too long;
and my community was far too large
for my remembrance. Still, I thanked the Lord,
the Father from whom every gift descends.
Calling for intercession from the saints,
I signed the cross: up-down-left-right, “amen,”
and finished praying in the silence.
Then,
still gazing upwards, I noticed the lights
in rows of chandeliers floating beneath
the arches of the lofty ceiling—
how
the light around the lights, in rainbow-lines
shifting at infinite speed seemed to move
both out, and down to me, and up and in.
Joseph Teti is an MA/PhD student in English Literature at the Catholic University of America, researching Augustine’s impact on George Herbert’s nature poetry. His poems have appeared in The Borough, Vermillion, Rialto Books Review, Clayjar Review, As Surely as the Sun, Foreshadow, and several other small Christian poetry magazines.
Amethyst Review 