Tim Wilson

Wake late. Skip the Old Testament reading.
Do the Gospel. Feel good. Ditch confession
and adoration prayers. Get straight to asking for stuff.
Mean it. Get up. Shout at kids. Mean it.
Feel bad. Their favourite story currently
is Jonah, a man reborn in a whale’s belly.
Drink coffee. Wish it were tea.
Leave late. Begin ‘Our Father...’
After ‘Give us this day...’ get
distracted by that colleague whose ass you want to kick.
Feel sick. Resume ‘Our Father...’ Pray for your earthly father(s).
Beg not to be poor, whom, btw, Jesus loved.
Recall sins: Pride, sloth; so much envy,
thinking, ‘How aren’t you bored, oh Lord?’
I am. Shouldn’t sin inspire empathy?
You still think it sometimes, revolving like a rotisserie bird
in the insomniac night, assailed, fearful, flaring,
botching rhymes for ‘Lloyd Geering’.
You don’t want to pray. You do anyway. Who are you, again?
The withered hand in Matthew, Luke, and Mark, but not John;
A leper sitting in St Cecilia’s in Spanish Harlem, his mask melting.
Error 404, sometimes. Control/Alt/Delete.
The rolled mattress by the pool of Bethesda; a heart awakening,
dawn smudged like blood in a pierced yolk.
Why this fatigue of whales, yourself, the sky?
Get off the bus. Feathered rocks stone
a woman etched in cumulonimbus. He made them too.
He loves them also. Cross
yourself before entering work.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us,
now and at the hour of our desk.