This just seems right...

I'm a person with a lot of faith - but no "Faith" if that makes sense - underneath my pessimism-stained defences lies a bright hopeful heart.

This poem says a lot: it's speaking to me right now... And I hope it's speaking for me, too. I want it to be a comfort, to console and to apologise and to be an olive-branch of hope... (I want a lot from a poem, don't I?)


[Thanks again Carol Ann Duffy: preposterously, humanly talented poet that she is...]

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre