Among her Mementos

Here's the gilt-edged missal and a rosary
she used to thumb each morning upon waking.
The beads are carved of fragrant wood.

For years, you thought of prayer as a wheel:
repeating phrases as someone cranks a lever.
You'd read from the gilt-edged missal, rosary

at the ready, hoping you remembered the refrain.
The gravity of now and at the hour, world without end.  
You came back by touching the beads of fragrant wood.

And perhaps, every prayer endures a kind of cycle—
the votive lit, the wish given words, lofting upwards.
My mother's gilt-edged missal, her rosary, memento

of how she put her faith in things not of the world
even as she did what she could to solve her problems.
What ends do they spell, beads carved of fragrant wood?

Part of you believes in hard work, in the practical;
part of you cries out to something in the night.
You touch these beads carved of fragrant wood,
the rosary she left, and the gilt-edged missal.