Prayer: "A Prayer to Mary at the Cross” by John Shea

On the hill outside the walls
beneath the brutalized memory of New Person
reels the struggled magnification of the Lord.

Woman,
the dead rain falls
and the earth grows cold
and your son no longer
swallows the sky.

But a song of hope
must be struck upon the strings
about the fallen sparrows and counted hairs,
the painful prayer of that widow with her mite,
the prophetic fierceness of the sun,
the fire of the desert stars
under which rings the adamantine No of Jesus
to the promises of the Prince
and the everlasting echo in your womb –
Fear not: God stirs.

Source: John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected, page 116.