‘2 Peter 3’ and Other Poetry by Jeffrey Essmann

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2 Peter 3

“Consider that our Lord’s patience is directed
toward salvation.” —2 Peter 3:15

For once in church (before, I think, the Sacrament)
In silence deep and cast adrift in prayer,
I folded in upon the immanent
For just a moment (maybe more) and there
Was made of my own heartbeat so aware
As to preclude all else surrounding me
While sensing in the steady thrum its share
Within a tapping in eternity—

A tapping patient, tender, soft upon
The soul, as if of one preoccupied
With all the sad and silly goings-on
Of someone whom they love and try to guide
Beyond the lush entanglements of pride;
The tapping of a God whose strange delight
Is there to wait until I’m safe inside,
No longer wandering aimless through the night.

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The Lost Souls in Purgatory

We picture them as quite remote
In darkened realms of endless flame
Where earthly words cannot connote
A pain that knows no antidote.
They linger there at mercy’s edge,
Their souls steeped in their sacrilege
And stripped of everything but shame.

And yet they’re closer than we know:
Each day we speak and interact
With them and barely note the slow
Despair that stalks them as they go.
They haunted pass us on the street
And closer home declare defeat
(I fear I live with one, in fact).

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Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.