The Month of the Rosary

Oct 9

A garden center Virgin (blue a bit

The worse for wear, her halo slightly chipped)

Made in her backyard shrine the most of it

While from her nose an autumn raindrop dripped.

It wasn’t ours. Some neighbors up the way

Had put it up a year or so ago

With stone they’d somehow never cleared away

From back when they redid their patio.

But fervent nine-year-olds will not be stopped,

And Kay and I, our rosaries clutched

As drear October round us dripped and dropped,

Felt Fatima our suburb faintly touched,

Each mystery thereby sweetly intercropped

With graces an adult would find too much.

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York.

His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary

journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review,

America Magazine, U.S. Catholic, Amethyst Review, Modern

Reformation, The Society of Classical Poets, and various venues

of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He

was the second place winner in the Catholic Literary Arts 2022

Assumption of Mary poetry contest and the first place winner

in its Advent: Mary Mother of Hope contest later that year. He

is editor of the “Catholic Poetry Room” page on the Integrated

Catholic Life website.

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