A poetry prompt for when all others fail

Ideally, start on Sunday.  
(All the best poems are written on Sundays).
Visit any church except your own
and learn how strangers pray to their gods.
Note the meter in the Lord’s Prayer,
the clean and full-bodied repetition of the Muslim salat,
and the music in the Buddhist hum.
See your own body reflected in the temple’s architecture:
high columns of bones reaching toward heaven,
stained-glass windows, delicate as an iris,
inner sanctum like a womb.
The anatomy of a church is a study of devotion.
The devout rally around the shared voice of faith,
a battalion against despair.
God speaks in every language, and poetry is one.
Write like each word itself is a blessing.

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