For Hope, Saint of the Forgotten

Sitting with you in that room
Among the haunted and wounded

Tissue balled in your tender hand
As you try to make sense of the senseless
The murder of two grandchildren
– Your only two –
A year apart
On the streets of the Forgotten
And the grief –
The crushing grief
The skin of your face
Floats on an ocean of tears:
And yet
While grief is your companion
Despair is a stranger.
You have adopted the neighborhood,
Reaching out
To the menaced, the at-risk and the forgotten,
Making them your own;
Loving Christ
With your whole heart and soul and mind and strength
In His children.