Timeless Share

Timeless Share

Michelle Shelfer

O, how I prayed for you
to cross the impossible impassible,
that He Who gave you freedom to parade your rebel flourish
might drape a corner of His threshing-floor robe
over your nakedness. That you might be saved.

And on your dying bed, I approached your right ear,
lobbying in reasoned rhyme for odds against eternal hazard.
You didn't budge then.
I retired to your left ear
for long, wailing, unworded plaint— 
spit and tears, sackcloth and ashes appealing,
not to you, but to your Father and mine.

Your left side awakened as from a coma
into radiant shalom, your face lit with new life.
I never saw you kvell so—the horns of Moses' glow.

I prayed for you,
but could it be that you, 
having once dug through to beyond your dying bed,
entered a space that needs no sequence, no before or after,
but comprehends an eternal yes?
And from there, that you are, were, would be, praying
for me already 
and always,
was and is and is to come?

And could it be,
the One Who sculpts sequence
as a suitor maps out the day he is to ask his lady's hand,
could it be He laid my then-prayers just alongside
your own groanings and howlings of a different then—
your prayers for me, thy beloved child,
that I might be saved and pray for you?
My present egg nested inside your then-eternal prayer palm,
both tucked beneath His perfect hand,
He wove through world-ages—
for prayer is native to nine a.m. Friday (your dying hour)
and equally to ever after.

What a glimpse of the One called "Mystery"!
To hear Him who rides on clouds: "Before Abraham was, I AM."

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Michelle Shelfer
Poet

Michelle and her husband lead Prepare a Room Ministries, which offers the healing work of the cross of Jesus to those hurt by abortion. They use teachings and the arts to honor the dignity of life. Visit PrepareaRoom.com and TheFoundlings.net.

 Photography by Anita Austvika