Autumn 2024

Psalm 30: Flagless Memorial Day

By Megan Willome

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down 
(and didn’t know it, though I sang the hymn), 
Lord, you veered me to the hiding place, 
reoriented my shoulder away from so shiny a pile of shards.
I asked my new friend to tea, Lord, and she came! 
Lord, you helped me cross that flagless Memorial Day 
with black tea blended with local lavender.
We ate farm-fresh blackberries and my homemade oat bread 
O Lord, you heard me
confess to her my thorns, my dreams, my revelations.
She saw the hallway in my wall –
what you, Lord, knew needed to open wide. 
We’ve met every month since. Lord, 
that was a decade ago. 

And Lord, you know I still strive nights on the couch, 
still spill my backpack of music down the pew,
startled one so love-sick gets to sing joy
in the morning, in the house of the Lord.

* title from E.B. White’s “Death of a Pig”

About the Author


Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry, a memoir, and Rainbow Crow, a picture book of poems about crows. Her poems have appeared at Ekstasis, Every Day Poems, The Clayjar Review, and The Way Back to Ourselves. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.