Poetry

Denial of Self

So we’ve lost our way. So what?

Photo by Pixabay

We spoke of devotions,
choking on idealist notion

of lifting us from suffering,
when suffering was all we’d known,

asking to fill skeptical hearts
with spirituality seeping from Believers,

knowing Faith wouldn’t yield fruit today,
but perhaps someday in far-flung future

our unwavering devotion
to dead men’s abstractions

would lead to salvation
somewhere unseen and unknowable,

finding scant solace in reciting Lord’s prayer
and other solemn affirmations of Faith

in front of grandma,
allowing her to smile,

exhale, and cross over,
after making sign of the cross,

secure in knowing that someday,
we’d join her in a paradise
we’d outgrown long ago,
all along, knowing

a worship serving
others’ sensibilities
instead of our own