For this is very heaven, these the days
Of my diminishment, for only by
The light of memory can I descry
With any constancy the subtle ways
By which I ought by right give fitting praise
For an abundance that too often I
Left unobserved or somehow viewed awry.
Diminished but by faith yet still ablaze,
Upheld by hope, confessed to charity,
I sense instead a moment of rebirth
Amid the growing darkness and the dearth
Of human kindness everywhere I see,
So that by grace it’s very clear to me
That very heaven still peeks through the earth.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, Amethyst Review, Pensive Journal, Forma Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets. He is a certified catechist with the Archdiocese of New York, a Benedictine oblate of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, and editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.