I’m Alive, I’m Alive, I’m Alive

We hadn’t sat down in a restaurant in a year
and a half, but there we were, trading pancakes
for bacon at Bert and Betty’s in Fillmore, Indiana,

the town I sometimes call Empty Less
as a dad joke, because I’m a dad, and the air
was warmer than it had been for months

and the light brighter if only for the pancakes
and bacon and the sweet words of the woman
who sat me and my daughters down at our booth.

We removed our masks like burglars
after a big score of jewels, smiling like we’d gotten away
with something big. Big, yes, I’ve said it thrice,

and let me say it thrice again: big, big, big
because what is bigger than pancakes or laughter
from mouths not masked, smiles not curtained

by those little rectangles of cloth?
“They’re big,” the woman warned, “you might just want
a short stack.” “Can I just order one, because

I want the eggs and the fried potatoes and
and the biscuits and gravy, too,” I said and my daughter
Ruthie told me she’d trade a slice of bacon for half a pancake

and I was happy about these exchanges between
me and my daughters eating a big breakfast with big pancakes
on big plates. This is not a poem about cholesterol

or maybe its saying screw cholesterol
and calorie counting unless it is to count the happiness of syrup
and our sweet and savory chatter with maybe a pie to go

and anything else you might want to count
or celebrate like breaths taken, steps walked, hardships
overcome, notes played, zoom meetings attended,

meals made at home, toilet paper rolls hoarded,
or words of a poem (roughly 400 by the time
I stop) said before a live audience in a space

as sacred as a maternity ward and its
nursery of newborns lined up inside a room
of possibility and hope with a window

for gawking grandmas and grandpas and anyone else
who needs a little reminder of life because what is bigger
than birth or rebirth or breakfast, for that matter,

that first meal of every new day, and that one where I sit
in Fillmore, getting my fill with two grown daughters, Ruthie
and Sarah, I can blink and remember as newborns nuzzling

and snuggling against my wife in those amazing moments just
after birth, still attached by the umbilical, caught
in their new air, crying out to say I’m alive, I’ve alive, I’m alive?

Joe Heithaus

Prayers and Reflections for this week

Sunday In-Person Worship, July 18 led by The Rev. Mary Slenski

You can connect to the service via Zoom. Click on this link to connect. If you have not used Zoom before, you will be prompted to download Zoom, go ahead and do that. When you enter the meeting you should be able to see and hear others and others can see and hear you. If you come in a little late, please listen for a moment before speaking. In order to see everyone, go to Gallery view (upper right on PCs and upper left for Macintosh). When we get started everyone except the speaker will be muted. If you are reading or playing music, please be sure to unmute yourself.

If you are connecting via telephone dial 301-715-8592 and when prompted enter the Meeting ID: 847 8600 1703 and press #, then enter the password: pray and press # again.

Click here for the service booklet for July 18

Your prayers are asked for: