Poet Reading and Interview with Rob Soley

My strokes are halting, not like the imagined fluidity
of the monastic scribes, hunched, by candlelight,
over some ancient text, perhaps the Our Father,
being deftly rendered in the thin black liquid
of a gently dipped quill.
From their sublime to my ridiculous work
in colored calligraphy markers
purchased at the local drugstore.
But my text is the same, the Our Father;
except mine is printed on the inside jacket
of the pocket edition of a scriptural rosary book,
printed and published a mere forty years ago.
What in heaven's name is the same about this?
Possibly the hope of being aligned with the Wild Holy,
or maybe the reverence for words spoken two thousand years ago
and murmured again and again a billion times since,
offering blessed connection to the communion of saints and sinners,
past and present, who join together and voice
the desire for the Divine to be all in all.
Oh, and one last thing;
the candlelight.

Rob Soley tutors children with an array of learning challenges and lives in a cooperative community in Greenbelt, Maryland.