A CUP OF PRAYER HOLDING SILENCE

A CUP OF PRAYER HOLDING SILENCE

“Let poems be cups of praying/ made for holding silence.” --- "Step Six and Step Seven" by Nura Yingling, from for Holding Silence. © BlazeVOX, 2013.

Do you remember those paper cups?

They were boats rather than planes.
We made those, too; made them fly.

But cups of prayer holding silence

Were the toughest to fold from scrap
Paper we found on Father’s desk.

How much noise did we make over

Their soundlessness? Enough to spoil
His hammock naps, he would growl.

That’s when we would run to Mother

And hide behind her while she sew
Clothes out of rags we made of shirts.

Quiet memories come back like these

When we crack open brittle pages
Of books where we clipped them

Like cups holding prayers of children

To feel absent caresses once again,
When silence overflows to their brim

At eventide, still twilights of our years,

When we talk to the shadows on walls
And pray: Let prayers be silent poems.

---Albert B. Casuga

Mississauga, 24 January 2014