Poem for the Day

I think writing intelligently and artfully about spiritual matters is really hard. Things either become so vague and metaphysical as to lose any connection to the real, or they become so trite and hackneyed that they lose any ability to move or inspire.

That's why I really liked this poem from today's Writer's Almanac by Marie Howe. She gets it right and does it well:

Prayer

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention--the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.