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Prayer on an Ordinary Sunday

by Carol Chapman

May the cold rain that spoiled your morning golf game

Fall pleasingly on the roses that thirst in your garden

May the guilt you feel about skipping church services

Result in an afternoon picnic with a friend and a dog

 

May the angry man in the pickup who flipped you the bird

Find himself fuming in vain between two very slow vans

 

May the teenager who cursed you for the rules you enforced

Awaken today to thank you for keeping him safe and alive

 

May that sharp pain in your knee that has been troubling you

Turn out to be a temporary aggravation that goes away swiftly

 

May that tumble down the stairs you took in the dark

Leave you unscathed and unafraid to keep climbing

 

May that extra piece of cheesecake that you passed up

Return in your dreams as a mirror image of a slender you

 

May the favorite sunglasses you thought you lost forever

Turn up on your doorstep with a note from a good neighbor

 

May the chance for peace in the Middle East that you hoped for

Become a possibility for calm coexistence in your lifetime

 

May the heavy sorrow you feel upon losing a loved one

Be transformed into gratitude and sweet memory as you grieve

 

May your wish that we stop polluting the ocean with plastic

Become a pledge to save the whales and dolphins and us

 

May the yearning you feel for a better world as this one crumbles

Send you sailing on a great journey to find your true calling

About the Author

Following a career as a journalist and author of nonfiction books, Carol Flake Chapman returned to poetry, her first love, after the sudden death of her husband on a wild river in Guatemala shattered her world. Poetry, she found, was the language of healing and of connection to an increasingly troubled natural world. She has since performed her poems in events and ceremonies around the world.

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