A Birthday Prayer for Jack Ceglic
Bless the perfect sheen of your high white walls
the lilting cadence of your towering glass windows
filling your mornings with light
all your happy kitchens
and gleaming stoves
simmering with scents of paradise
the litanies your houses sing
to their roofs and cellars
elegant as the wings of swallows
bless your pure and generous heart
the arias your day lilies sing to Manuel
the architect of your dreams
bless the faces you have painted
with prophetic imagination
their eyes spiced with garlic and chives
bless the love you’ve given to us
your eternal neighbors
the design you turned into our home
bless your elegant wings
that have lifted us higher
than we believed we could go.
Philip Schultz lives in East Hampton. His new poetry collection, “Enormous Morning,” comes out from W.W. Norton on March 10. He will read from it on March 28 at 6 p.m. at The Church in Sag Harbor.