Garments of Praise by Mary McReynolds

Two tracks veered inside my mind,

and I could follow only one,

the nearest cleaving hemispheres

inside my right/left deadpan brain

(stay with me here and understand):

to mend the soul requires 

such seamstressing beyond

what thimbled fingers do;

the tearing tares are

unseamed rips from there to here,

mortal chasms in their wake--

God knows the messes that we make,

the blessed patterns we ignore.

Believe as holy spindles fly,

believe for healing in those wings 

to hymn the thoughts of loss and stings,

patchworked quilts outside of time

held by sutured notes divine.

Mary McReynolds, author of Wells of Glory, Crossway Books, 1996. BA English, MA Creative Studies, University of Central Oklahoma. Other books in print include Redeeming Love: The Legacy of the Deaconess Ladies, The Tapeworm Emails, What the Seven Thuinders Uttered, and Seeds and Stems, A Poetic Collection. McReynolds lives in northwest Arkansas with her husband of 44 years, James McReynolds, retired journalist (The Oklahoman newspaper).