Praise What Comes

Praise What Comes
surprising as unplanned kisses,
all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude,
your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather.
Praise talk with just about anyone.
And quiet intervals,
books that are your food and your hunger;
nightfall and walks before sleep.
Praising these for practice,
perhaps you will come at last to praise grief
and the wrongs you never intended.
At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions:
did I love,
finish my task in the world?
Learn at least oneof the many names of God?
At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began
and another ended,
the jumping-off places between fear andpossibility,
at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
~ Jeanne Lohmann ~
(The Light of Invisible Bodies)