Unsuspected Mercies

The world is full of unsuspected mercies:
an orange’s skin peels off in one long piece
and fills the room with scent like sunlight bursting
between the blinds when darkness wouldn’t cease;
a voice that mourns for war and hopes for peace
sings promise as a drink in desert thirsting;

a chord that gathered tension is releasing,
is letting go a note I held too long;
the words don’t come, and then they come so easy,
and everything goes right that had been wrong;
where there was silence now there is a song
that fills the room, and everybody sings it;

a table where we savor the belonging—
PB&Js or flights of elegance—
when coffee’s brewing everyone comes thronging,
with madeleines so good that Proust makes sense,
and prayers arise that break down every fence,
and out past those there is a new day dawning;

the morning comes, but comes upon you gently
(you thought new heavens and a brand-new earth
would need a cataclysm, but they’re sent here
each time a seed awakens in the dirt)
and mercy is made new, and all our thirst
is satisfied by sips from heaven’s wellspring.

Dance when the sun comes up By Vardhini reddy - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128268821

This piece comes from my time spent in Virginia last weekend on a songwriting retreat with the Porter’s Gate for the daily prayer app, Pray As You Go. You can see pictures here.