Ordinary Time
Poems for the Liturgical Year
Michael D. Riley
Ordinary Time
Poems for the Liturgical Year
Copyright © 2016 Michael D. Riley. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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“Let poems be prayers.”
Priest to penitent Seamus Heaney
Station Island
“O, exquisite risk!”
St. John of the Cross
The Dark Night of the Soul
“So far from heaven, yet still I can sing.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
The Story of a Soul
“We forget too often that the only possible
language of religion is metaphor.”
Richard Rohr
Silent Compassion
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A number of the poems in this collection had the good fortune to find prior publication. Those initial appearances:
America: “Darkness: For Mother Teresa.”
Ancient Paths: “Signing.”
Clare: “This Stable Ground.”
Epic Journal: “Ashes: Lenten.”
Iron Horse Literary Review: “One Body.”*
Karamu: “In the Hotel Bethlehem.”
The Plains Poetry Journal: “Via Dolorosa.”
The St. Andrews Review: “The Last Waltz.”
The St. Katherine Review: “Brendan.”
Studio [Australia]: “A Prayer for the Middle of the Night,” “Canticles of Ecstasy,” “Churched,” “Conversion,”* “The Desert,” “Host,”* “In Memoriam: For Aunt Pat,” “Mickey Calling,” “Pentecostal,” “Rags.”
Windhover: “A Prayer for First Light,” “A Prayer to Pray Again,” “Mary Elizabeth,” “Penitential,”* “Pilate’s Clothes.”
* These poems also appeared in my earlier book Players.
GLANCE
A wingtip.
Feathered air
muses over skin.
Come and gone,
he alters by fractions.
Cheek and shoulder
shocked and forgotten.
His shadow dims
the trees.
Day or night now
by the windowsill.
Indecisions where
you come to yourself
into dawn or twilight.
What is difference?
Death of the old self
of illusion and desire,
birth of the new self
of illusion and desire.
Soon you will know
whether the brink
widens or narrows,
the light swells or dies.
Watch. Wait.
Do not swerve
or stop. Do not
sleep.
APOLOGIA
Because of the absurdity of a very young girl
believing herself visited by an angel of God
Because of the absurdity of that same young girl
believing herself the virgin bride
of the God of the universe
of sound and silence
Because of the absurdity of a very old woman
believing she too could still bear a child
Because of the absurdity of these same two women
believing that in their contiguous wombs,
contiguous extremes of age and experience
together in the same house,
lay caller and called,
metanoia itself
Because of the absurdity of one good man
believing a dream that tells him
his pregnant young wife is a virgin still
and more than faithful
Because
