In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration

In the hills, a chapel painted pink.
Pillars of marbled cream shot through
with faint markings of blue.

Around the clock, always a pair of nuns
prostrate before the altar. Here, intention
is a strip of paper penned by gnarled fingers

in the flickering half-dark, then fed
to the flame. Branches wrestle all night
with the wind, then sigh. A wren

perches on the rim of the rain gutter.
Even on backward knees, I wish I could hold
a hope as fixed and steadfast as that.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.