Brother, first bring a gift
clean and resplendent.
This widow’s hand was haloed
and purified with sacrifice.
Shall we worship a broken ship,
some holy thing invaded and spoiled?
Someone has been wronged and God
will not leave. Here,
thy gift. Be reconciled, Brother.

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This poem is an erasure of My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year (1914), by John Henry Jowett, the "January 25th— First, My Brother!" entry. I was doing a poem-a-day challenge with some other poets and stumbled across this book at the fabulous gutenburg.org site. A good number of the entries in the book seemed to scream out for erasure, which was just what I needed at the time. I find erasure and other found poetry to be a fun and effective way to shake loose the mind when I'm stuck on some other poem.