Anna – Last Words
1.
Today I say goodbye
too soon, dear ones, I know;
too few, the years we’ve shared
so brief, the lessons learned.
But things beyond our reach
outside our grasp
have come to make this day my last;
this day I pass from you and all the love you’ve shared in these short, few, seven, years.
2.
I feel you standing over me
and know your longing vigil at my side –
as anguished Pietas beside my linen tomb –
is soon to end.
Beyond these machines and their beeping, breathing, beats;
my heart already pulses to another sound –
to which their rhythmic prods aren’t keeping time –
It draws me ever closer to a light just like your love
but only so much brighter
shining from above beyond your sad and watching eyes
Let yourself be drawn
Chris Ahrends
Let your self be drawn by simpler things,
your heart and its desires.
Let your doing be the action
your being shares.
And your action will be
the sacred morning mist
of a dawning day,
and your presence as water
in a parched land.
*****************
In the Silence
In France a few years ago – this monastery – alone and in silence
In the Silence
Chris Ahrends
In silence.
In the waiting silence.
In the daily waiting silence.
Attentive and with inner smile.
Mindfully he sits.
As though
his life
depends on it
because it does.
The silence – waiting watching non-judgemental smiling silence.
It works on him.
Stripping away social-self.
Gently dethroning ego-self.
Opening the way for true-self’s yearning emergence.
In silence he sits and
watches the new begin
It always does.
Morning Prayer
Morning Prayer
Chris Ahrends
I enter in
the darkened empty chapel
alone and prayerful
incense lingering
in memory of
those who made
their earlier communion here.
I touch water
sign the cross and bend a knee
to the red glow that beacons
and beckons I see
the Holy One
is host here.
I see candles
faithfully flickering
at saint’s sandalled feet
and add my lowly votive too
saying
as faithful have before…
Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you; Blessed are you amongst women; Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus; Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…
I find my place
in darkened corner
and start my prayers alone amongst the ancient saints
A single voice
in symphony with the myriad
who’ve done this
and so much more before…
Each day
I add my trivial vigil
and enter in
Each time
amazed
by the holy place within,
where always,
I am met by grace.
