These days my prayer’s as gray as rain
And haunted by an April chill.
I lack all spirit to complain;
My ardor is an act of will.
And yet I know my Loving God
Has seen me through moods far more odd.
And I’m not sure, it’s He or I
Who shudders in the matin shades and softly sighs.
Then somewhere near I hear a bird,
A sparrow’s silly trilling peep
Asserting Nature must be heard
While half the city’s still asleep.
It’s by the window, out of view
The stained glass tints its song to blue,
And all my tepid prayer’s surpassed
By song and glory sweet of angels in the glass.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review and The Road Less Traveled. He is a Benedictine oblate of Mt. Saviour Monastery.