Poem September 1, 1980 Issue

"Always" and "every"*

SUSAN M. SCHMELTZ

From childhood I had read those words,
skimming them smoothly
over mind and tongue.
And then
in that expectant hush
of communing Silent Prayer
what a waterfall of gratitude
washed over me!
A realization too momentous to quickly grasp—
even before the world's first words of history were inscribed,
whenever shelter was at hand,
or hunger's pangs were eased,
in days unrecorded and ways unknown,
it was divine Love
that met each human need,
and would, again, hereafter.
"Always" and "every"
I now glimpsed,
at least in part.