Final Exit on a Grace Note (Poem)

Final Exit on a Grace Note

Let us celebrate with sweet words
the lifting of the scrim before the promised Eden

re-sound the perfectly pitched grace note
pricking our stranded memory's retreat

into one and then another rosary
one bead to count every earlier misfire

in that thinnest of places we wanted for respite.


Let us celebrate with wine
the occasion transfigured before the flash

of the eighth day of creation
when stripped broken and hungering

we kneaded of dough from yeast enough
to redeem the work of another's hands upon our own.


Out of the once lumps of clay let us carve
a single line of shimmering grace

in the crevice of belief.

Let us repeat the pattern of sonorous words
put down on vellum and fed us like formula

from a simple silver cup.


From our lips plumped red
comes the miracle:

the chattered communion of ash with dust.

© 2010 Maureen E. Doallas. All Rights Reserved.
_______________________________

I wrote this poem for the Tuesday, May 18, Blog Carnival sponsored by Bridget Chumbley at One Word at a Time and Peter Pollock of Rediscovering the Church.

The Blog Carnival is a biweekly online event open to anyone. Participants write on a one-word prompt or topic. This week's is "grace".

At Bridget's place you'll find a list of links to all of the contributions, which are posted throughout Tuesday and often through to the end of the week.

The Blog Carnival's FaceBook page is here.

*

I also wrote this poem for Carry on Tuesday, which each week provides a prompt that participants are to use wholly or partly in an original poem or prose piece.

The prompt for Tuesday, May 18, comes from Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254 - 184 B.C.): Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.

To read other Carry on Tuesday contributors' poems or prose for Prompt #53, go here.