by Jeffrey Essmann

Her eyes from clouded depths emerged
As slowly she began to see
In me someone who yet had urged
A place in memory—

Though memory long since defiled, 
Its fractured shards lay here and there
With randomness purblind and wild
In utter disrepair.

Yet somehow still I held a place
In it, a man without a name
Who had at least a friendly face
And on the weekend came. 

I helped her with her luncheon goo
Until her eyes said, “done”;
Wiped off her mouth and wheeled her to
The rosary at1:00.

The chapel was already filled
With hunched and graying clouds of saints
All with the Spirit strange instilled
Beyond the body’s plaints.

For many it was months or years
Since they’d a sentence whole intoned;
A phrase might pop up, disappear,
And one or two just groaned.

But when the sister played the chord
Of Tantum Ergo’s opening phrase,
As one they sang out to the Lord
In perfect-Latin praise.  

And bead-by-bead they kept on track
As if for just a bit restored.
Then, rosary done, they drifted back
To where they were before.

My aunt is gone, but now and then
There comes the memory we share
Of being warm and whole again
Within the arms of prayer.

---

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, Agape Review, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Amethyst Review, Modern Reformation, The Society of Classical Poets, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He was 2nd Place winner in the Catholic Literary Arts 2022 Assumption of Mary poetry contest and 1st Place winner in its Advent: Mary Mother of Hope contest later that year. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.