When the whole church kneels to pray <br />- though some of us just pretend to kneel: <br />leaning forward uncomfortably, <br />our ungainly bums only observed <br />by the row in the pew behind – <br /> <br />the lady next to me does it in style, <br />yet with observable humility: <br />she was taught to kneel, I guess, in <br />Sunday School when she was five or less, <br />and about seventy years later, <br />here’s devotion's lifetime posture still: <br /> <br />erect, elbows on the pew’s bookshelf, <br />so that her hands together point straight, <br />let’s say, to heaven; counterpointed <br />by the head a little lowered in humility; <br /> <br />and I study, discreetly, these praying hands, <br />subtly shaded by a lifetime <br />in rose, white, grey, yellow, brown, red, blue; <br />here smooth, here barely covering bone, <br />here worn, here wrinkled; <br /> <br />the rest of her, devout; an innerness <br />which I can only guess at <br />in her lifetime stance; but these hands <br />with their lifetime of a woman’s work <br />have, this Sunday morning, offered up <br />their mighty selves unto their maker God.. <br /> <br />When my mother’s dressed for Sunday <br />she’s a stranger to the child in me: <br />dressed in matching hat, gloves, handbag, shoes; <br />not for the public eye or anyone’s approval, <br />but as the public dresses for its God; <br /> <br />and I glance at these hands, which speak to me <br />of prayer, of life, that's way beyond my childish mind; <br />these stranger hands, with more things yet untold <br />than I would know or dare to ask of her.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/praying-hands-2/
