Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Prayer for Clearing Up the Past by Marianne Williamson

Dear God,
Please take my past and take my future,
Transform them both through the miracle of Your power into energies of love and love only.
May I know the present as You would have me see it.
May I see only You in everyone and everything that I might be dazzled by the light, lifted up by the light, given joy by the light, and made new by the light.
Release me from my past and deliver me to my future.
In You I trust; nothing else is real.
In You I have faith; nothing else has power.
And so it is that I am where I belong, and I shall strive for nothing.
I am at home; may I feel this and be at peace.
For I would rob myself no longer through my vain imaginings and tormented thoughts.
You are my life.
You are here and now.
Amen.

Thirst by Mary Oliver

Another morning

and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have.

 I walk out to the pond

and all the way God has

given us such beautiful lessons.

Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell;

grant me, in your mercy,

a little more time.

Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.

Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst,

 I am slowly learning.