Their mother’s prayers lay folded

in unlikely places—next to common pins:

this prayer seeks forgiveness for her sins.

On her sewing table, lay sacred words she etched

on scraps of Irish linen beside her children’s names,

among her needles, scissors, coloured threads

and twisted silver thimbles. And on the wall

a faded scroll declares she’s His alone.

 

This distant God of hers resembled no one

she has seen. Her children’s hearts are hard

against this unfamiliar Saviour.

Their footsteps spurn the pathways

taking them from her to Him; their toys are

instruments of death, their playgrounds killing fields.

Constant as the sunset, their mother’s cries

assail Him with details of their lives,

certain He will turn their water into wine.                                      

 

And when her evening beckons,

She turns from them

and gives her final words to Him,

raising up each child by name

for saving, one by one, with not a word to them.

 

They mourn her going, her eyes fixed on Him

until her eyelids tremble into stillness—

one last prayer crumpled

between her loosening fingers. Their shoulders fall

into a silence, pure as a river.

Now between her ribs, old knots

--unravelling all their lives—

grow tight.

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