With sighs too deep for words the Spirit prays
On our behalf when all our holy plaints
And even our most reverent displays
Can barely stir the angels and the saints
Much less to godly audience aspire;
When fervid thoughts at heaven aimed are feints
Deployed to mask the absence of true fire.
Then something yawns and stretches in our soul,
Ignores our words, hears only our desire:
The Advocate whose joy is to console
Transforms our incoherence with his might
And by his sighs our weakened will makes whole.
Though wordless yet we stand within God’s sight,
Our emptiness now breathing with the light…
Jeffrey Essmann’s poetry has appeared in America Magazine, Dappled Things, St. Austin Review, The Road Not Taken, and in various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate.