
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.