10)JL Jacobs: Prayers and Poems.

Come sit beside us, O God, within us, around us

and energize us to be more,
to seek our status in your Spirit,
to seek our identity in You.

May we be one in You,
as we brother and sister together,
that in becoming mirrors,
we might reflect your shining
as the stars do the sun.

O God of our transforming

help us see the miracles about us,

to realize when your are there
rivering our deserts,
and building roads through our oceans. Amen.

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On Synaesthesia

and Beethoven’s Marcia funebre:  Allegro assai

How many poets

do you reckon       see / hear

music in colors?

Is anyone surprised

Samuel Taylor Colridge

described      the bright

the deep            purple

of Beethoven’s slow

movement of his Eroica.

Call now: Two flutes, two oboes,

two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns,

two trumpets, tympanum, and strings.

Famous funeral march tempo

into music that almost goes away.

Diminished A seventh.

Color now:

Purple. Royal. Hallowed Advent.

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God of manna in the wilderness

God of living manna

upon whom we feast

in Holy Eucharist,

we entreat you,

enter    

into the whole of our beings,

that in love

we may honour and prefer you,

keeping our committment

to your Holy Word.

We await you

that we might

behold

your Shekhinah, your radiance,

and ourselves become

a sacred tent of the Covenant.

JL Jacobs is an Oklahoma poet, and the author of The Leaves in Her Shoes.   The first and third pieces were liturgical prayers written for St. John's Episcopal Church.