PATIENCE by Frank Horne.

Patience…patience
they all say…
but will patience
climb up a stair
or pick up a spoon
or chant a litany?
…those hollows
worn in a cathedral step
by the long slow prayers
of countless worshippers kneeling…

But do I not have a hundred years
nor forty
nor ten-
O you they call Eternal
to whom a thousand years
are but the wink of a languid eye-
help me to crowd
years of patient trial
and error
into the few flying days
I have…
Lend me but a jot
of Your aeon-packed
eternity
compress its infinite patience
into hours
and minutes
if it be Thy will
and the paean of my earthly gratitude
will reach up
and shake the very pillars
of the everlasting heavens…