Tuesday, October 5, 2021https://kuc.org/wp-content/uploads/joy-16.jpg

Katie Snipes Lancaster

Scripture
Night and day
we pray
most earnestly
that we may see you
face to face.
1 Thessalonians 3:10

A Look at Joy
Then too there is this
joy in the day’s being done, however
clumsily, and in the ticked-off lists,
the packages nestling together,
no one home waiting for dinner, for
you, no one impatient for your touch
or kind words to salve what nightly
rises like heartburn, the ghost-lump feeling
that one is really as alone as one had feared.
One isn’t, not really. Not really. Joy
to see over the strip mall darkening
right on schedule a neon-proof pink
sunset flaring like the roof of a cat’s mouth,
cleanly ribbed, the clouds laddering up
and lit as if by a match struck somewhere
in the throat much deeper down.

“Then Too There Is This” by J. Allyn Rosser, from Poetry (March, 2004).

Prayer
Settle into this day’s joy, O God,
as we await the surprise of noticing what was already there,
a quiet opening of your presence. Amen.