Microprayers for Lent: Weeks Four and Five

17.
When did clay first think to shirk the potter?
As lungs
first billowed with breath, sun barely risen?

18.
I was not there at first dawn yet I too wake with
the same
serpentine thought in my drowsy brain.

19.
Great mystery: that clay should breathe and defy.
Greater this:
that dried up clay should breathe again.

20.
When it breathes, what does the clay city say?
Traffic groans
while the city moans its Kyrie.

21.
And over the frailty and smog of the earthen day
we have
this treasure that rises and cries, Father –

22.
Father, mold us. Squash, bend, transform –
we grow
dry and cracked. Supple us in Your hand.

23.
And such layers of rot, bones and trash
that collect
in the cracks within me…

24.
Long dry season. Autumn rains tarry
and dust
fills every crevice. Thistles blow.

25.
When Your April showers come will You
make mud
of dust, soften clay into some changeable thing?

26.
Do not let me dry and harden again as some
misshapen
parody of Your image. Mold me new.