Our Lady of the Night

In the earliest hours, when world

Yet sleeps in restless wonderings

Cease I, and keep a vigil

In faith's terrible darkness singing 

With the Lady of the Night.

Here, I discover how her serene silence soothes 

tender, lonely tormented

souls, even in death's grip,

For faith's shadow holds

such love from dark night's Lady.

The Cross on an empty street, 

sudden struck sober cars

An absent father's homecoming, 

That wounded son, my difficult brother, sin now

Born away, on faith's lightening, as flash 

And flow those tears unseen shed

Of the Mother before coming Light.

The Cross of cloaked asphalt, cement, 

hidden bus stop, when no-one knew

that disconnected goodly child self-poisoned

In her arms at rest as did her own Son

Save that Woman who gazes by faith's glory.

We place such large stones in the holes we dig

For ourselves, for those we love 

While faith weeps, aching for the lost

In her arms, we rest, as did her own Son,

with the Daughter whose glory sees hope.

Rising, before first light, a dawning New Day, 

In each one's garden, a throw from that Cross, from

Every Cross, wounded Hands roll away that large stone,

While in upper room, in each one's plight, prays

That good Lady, the Gardner's Mother, ours in the night.