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Armor Poetry at Paper Poetry
You Are My Armor
How an Irish hymn became a poetic epiphany
Call it what you want but I call it Divine Providence.
Think about it.
On January 1, I issued Paper Poetry’s Armor poetry prompt. At the time, I had no clue as to how — or even if — I would participate in the prompt.
For a few days, I furtively poked a stubby pencil at an elusive villanelle before declaring it a battle not worth fighting. White flag flying, I retreated to the trenches and waited for reinforcements to arrive — hopefully in the form of an opening salvo to kickstart my next campaign.
And behold, it happened!
In church!
Charging in on the back of ‘be thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one’ we sang the third verse of the hymn ‘Be Thou My Vision’ —
Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight
Be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might
Be thou my soul’s shelter, be thou my strong tower
O raise thou me heavenward, great power of my power
It was January 12, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and there I was in church having a poetic-prophetic epiphany of my own!
Was it a case of ‘right place, right time’ or was God literally putting words in my mouth?
After the hymn, I sat quietly in my pew disassembling the third verse and reimagining it as 5-syllable lines in iambic meter and modern-day language.
Back home in my bunker, I strategised some more, swelling the ranks with lexical manoeuvres from the flanks…
…until it was finally ready to go into action —
You are my breastplate
My sword for this fight
You are my beacon
That shines day and night
You are my compass
My savior, my light
You are my armor
That gives me true might
You are my shelter
From fire, storm, shower
With you I have peace
Each minute, each hour
