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Saving Mercy

O Lord, “create in me
a clean heart”
and wash the soiled
memories and reasonings
from the murals to which I cling.*
“Leadeth me beside the
still waters,”
wherefrom Your Love can
bathe my soul in Beauty.**
O Lord, “create in me
a clean heart,”
and I, in surety, can in
Your sheepfold rest in peace,
dipping my gourd into
Your living spring, eternally
slaking what before
could not be relieved.***

Leo Carroll
September 6, 2025
Westford, Massachusetts

* Psalm 51:10
** Psalm 23:2
*** John 4:14



Photo by Leo Carroll

Sandra Elizabeth Daylily

(“Do Not Be Afraid, Mary,
You Have Found Favor with God”) *

Ah, I have
glimpsed you, before
overnight you
disappear into the
hill country of
Judea, as if
your essence could
ever possibly
be ephemeral,
as if your beauty and
the fruit of your
womb, Jesus, could
ever fear!

Leo Carroll
August 5, 2025
Westford, Massachusetts

*Luke 1:30



Photo by Leo Carroll

Sisters

(“Lord, Don’t You Care That My Sister
Has Left Me to Do All the Work by Myself?”) *

O’, bumblebee,
engrossed and enveloped
as you are,
captured in this
split-second beatific
vision of the core
of Beauty, are
you like Martha,
busy and bustling,
or rather like Mary – seated
rapt in listening at
the font and foot of the
Teacher’s lips, His
words pouring forth,
pollinating and
bathing, Martha the
moments missing, Mary
them in her heart
saving…?

Leo Carroll
July 31, 2025
Westford, Massachusetts

*Luke 10:38-42



Photo by Leo Carroll

Psalm 23:2

(“He Leadeth Me beside the Still Waters”)

From what “still waters”
did this face wash the sleep
out of its eyes? What
“Pool of Siloam” was found, *
whence a daylily could
find forgiveness, and in raising
its head up from fresh
dewdrops – know its beauty
was no longer blind?

Leo Carroll
July 10,2025
Westford, Massachusetts

*John 9:7



Photo by Leo Carroll

Confessing

I was too tired to pray,
so all I could barely whisper was
to ask Jesus to recite my
prayer for me, the very same
Jesus Who was being
scourged and abused at the pillar,
crowned with vicious thorns,
dragged cruelly through
screaming passageways to
Calvary, and then nailed
with filthy Roman spikes to a
Cross, and in the last
throes of His agony crying out,
“My God, my God, why
did You abandon me?”
*
Yes, that is the same Jesus
Whom I implored to recite the
words for me…because I
was too tired to stay awake and in
self-centered pity to pray.

Leo Carroll
April 24, 2025
Westford, Massachusetts

*Mark 15:34



Photo by Nick Price (via Unsplash.com)