Today our shared prompt for the project was the idea of a response to something else–another poem, an image, whatever. My poem ended up taking on the motif of the religious call and response, specifically in this case related to how the confirmation process was supposed to work for a young girl. The piece is semi-autobiographical, but like most of my work there’s no one-to-one correspondence between life and the poem. I will admit to having had great hopes for some type of magical feeling when I was baptized and realizing that I was, in fact, just wet. I was looking through confirmation liturgy for the Methodist church, and while it’s all quite staid and lovely (as one would expect from the Methodists), the sections with the fill-in-the-blanks for names seemed just rather funny. Here’s “May the Holy Spirit Work Within [Name]”. Common theme I’m seeing emerging: I have very high, irrational expectations of pretty much everything. I suppose the inevitable disappointment is good for poetry, though…