Jo Matthews - And what about prayers

In her powerful three-part sequence poem “And what about prayers”, poet Jo Matthews explores the potential and constraints of prayer and faith. In her poem, you watch how views and expressions of holiness grow, evolve, and change in a person’s life as they themselves grow and change. There’s a lot to unpack and savor in “And what about prayers”, and that’s why all of us at The Dewdrop feel it’s special and worthy of your readership. Come with us, and explore Jo’s exquisite work. Jo told The Dewdrop, “My hope for my writing is that I can somehow take the everyday moments of life and find a way to see them from a different, maybe even redemptive, angle. To combine the everyday with the otherworldly, to see the miraculous within the mundane, to find the alchemy in adversity.”

And what about prayers

1.
Sometimes I think of the prayers that were said for me
worry worked out from beads of caress-smoothed cedar
psalms and supplications said on my confirmation day
even though I felt like a fraud for my hot and itchy heart
prayers for blessing and safe passage and health and oh –
nothing specific, just divine protection (you know the stuff)
and later the prayers of middle-night, sleepless petitions to
get me out of a marriage or unwind from addictions, those
dark velvet tongue-fuzzing wild and winding prayers that
later crossed oceans to find Siddhartha and shining Shinto
shrines (spirits always watching) and new prayers for safe
delivery, for life on life, those answered and em-bodied prayers
later sticking stubby toddler hands in the ancestor incense ash
before I can reach them: a quick lick of holy in their hot and
prayerless world.

2.
When I introduced my three-year-old to the felty Baby Jesus
in the nativity scene, she grabbed him and said:

‘Come with me Babyccinno, I’ll take care of you’

and I wondered whether we should get busy finding
her some blessed bodyguards other than this god of
Milk and Froth she was fist-clenching the life out of

but not knowing where to begin, with all the:

sacred screens and see-to-believes
and meditations-for-one, of micro-dosing and
pendulum-dousing of ice breathing and crystals
bathing in moonlight for protection, from mercury
retrograding the shit out of everything —––again!

Then again, aren’t we lucky that we don’t have to sit
in wooden pews and smell flagstone damp and coffee-breath
on hymns and listen to the lists of our wrongs and wranglings

rather – we can declare hand on heart:
‘You know, I’d say I’m not religious, I’m spiritual’

And be greeted by an interested nod, or:
‘The universe has my back!’

(Jesus, whatever you do, don’t mention God)

But will they feel lost, my daughters, without
————that Big Man in the sky or
————that Smaller Man under the tree
—————————(hey, it’s not me, we grew up with the He’s)

——————-and what about the prayers?

3.
I guess I could say: I carry them in my heart all day.
It might be a cliché, but to lug another two hearts around as
well as your own verges on the Biblical. I guess I could say

I micro-dose prayers to them at night, my hand stroking
hot foreheads, my song hidden inside the song
My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean: Oh God, So Much Could Go Wrong

I guess the worry woven into my old bones is my
breast-beating, begging he/him/she/her/they/theirs
to protect them from It All. I could say that I hunger

for the holy, or for redemption lying in the morning grass
or for confession in my fading flesh, I guess in this
earth-deep itch sprinting through my cells something

must start to stick? I guess I can show them how the sky
and the trees can shake the shame from their skin, how the
light shining behind their eyes is the place to begin, I guess

what I’m saying is:

————-could (you) protect them without my prayers?
————-nothing to unmake them, no end that’s an end
————-if this counts? if (you) hear me? if (you’re) there?

——————————————————————————————-(Amen)

Jo Matthews

Originally from Oxford (UK) Jo Matthews is a freelance writer and copywriter living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her poetry and writings have appeared in Popshot magazine, Acumen, Fish Anthology, Prairie Fire, The Rappahannock Review, and The Times (UK), among others. She was recently selected by Arvon as a winner of their 5-day Poetry Challenge and shortlisted for the Creative Ink Poetry Prize 2023. She is mum to two small daughters, who are simultaneously keeping her young and ageing her rapidly.