Salvation has a rhythm: how it paced
Itself in times
Of prophecy and kings! Oh, how it slowed
And stumbled; then how of a sudden flowed
With a sublime
Delight when she who was so fully graced
The meter of redemption made her own!
The joyous lilt
Of Incarnation danced through human flesh
And, now with pure divinity enmeshed,
We were rebuilt
Into the image we had overthrown.
Though soon enough the lilt was turned to dirge.
In suffering
And sacrifice the tempo moved toward bleak
Crescendo. Sorrow wove its dark mystique
(A hellish thing)
Around a heart where faith and pain converged.
Yet glory’s measure won’t be stopped. It soars:
From death to life;
From hill to Heaven; wind and Spirit; fire;
Oh see her swept aloft to Heaven’s choir,
The humble wife
And widow now our Queen for evermore!
And thus now bead by bead and prayer by prayer
We keep the beat
Of covenantal grace and mystery
Revealed; the rhythm of eternity
Sings soft and sweet
And calls us ever to our Mother’s care.
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.