Below is a poignant prayer of great beauty by Jane Mead, award-winning American poet who loved Nature, lived in California, and died at 61—too young. Yet her words live on. Here she says: Listen!
I live in a retirement community surrounded by tall trees—Nature’s sentinels I do not feel the ache of loneliness, because I do not live alone.There are many people here, however, who do feel such loneliness. The weather is friendly to outside walks. When I see people strolling I nod and wave at a distance. I stop to chat—standing 6-10 feet away and through my mask—when I see people sitting on a bench or on their walker seats. Sometimes we stand side by side to watch the construction site vehicles, at rest or at work. Despite the current isolating circumstances, amidst the silent dread of winter’s approach and anxiety about our nation, not to mention our planet in peril, there is a silent affectionate ache that connects every living thing. Listen for it.
Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make
by Jane Mead
Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.
And, what is more, I have spent these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said “soul”
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should - it speaks that language.
I do not know who you are.
I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch -
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water -
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly under the bridge, though today the river’s
fully melted. I must have seen.
But I did not see.
I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness -
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy -
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.
Of course, of course.
What I meant when I said ”soul”
was that there should be a place.
On the far bank the warehouse lights blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.
And look -
my own palm - there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm -
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.
Listen -
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried -
listen, I am holy.
