Endurance By Jeffrey Essmann

Endurance

“Forty years I endured that generation.” - Psalm 95

I wonder now and then how much I’ve left
Of my allotted forty years of grace.
Should I perhaps of hope be sore bereft
Or might I still maintain a braver face?
If I could somehow know the time and place
When God first felt his patience growing short
Yet entered me in mercy’s database
With forty years of prime online support.
“That generation” was a sorry sort,
Though; nearly drove God mad with their complaints.
Yet while through twoscore years they did cavort,
The desert has a way of making saints.
So though unsure I’m trusting God Divine
Is holding me somewhere at thirty-nine.

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, The Road Less Traveled 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.