Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering Electrical Rosary

This ilke Monk leet olde thynges pace,
And heeld after the newe world the space.

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

How out of date are simple wooden beads
An upgrade is what the Rosary needs!

Something to give your meditations spice
Connected to your electronic device

Beamed back and forth to The Cloud, you see
With mega-mega gigs of memory

Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary is just the thing!

The Ave Maria is so out of date
It’s Ave ME now, ‘cause we’re all so great!

Make your prayers less about God, more about you
Signal yourself through sacred Tooth of Blue

A camera hidden in the crucifix
Enables you to take your selfie-flicks

The Pater beads count each joggery mile
Or kilometres if those are your style

The Ave beads are recycled with care
To save the forests, the rivers, and air


Designed in Germany, made in China
High-definition beads; there’s nothing finer

Buy the first (as advertised on tv)
And we’ll send you a second all for free

Remember: for weddings, funerals, and daily devotions
Let RAM and ROM go through all the motions

Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary – O make it sing!

You noticed, when you last
saw Betty the evening she
was dying, in the curtained
off area of the ward, that she
was wearing around her neck,
the wooden rosary you had

given her some months before.
Her husband had telephoned
you and said she was dying and
she wanted to see you. But when
you arrived she was already on
her way out, her eyes closed,

the death rattle taking hold,
her husband and her children
about her bed. The rosary, a
brown wooden cross with a
metallic Christ, was still there,
the Christ lying where her night

gown covered ******* slowly
rose and fell. When you’d seen
her some months back, in the
high street, she said she would
learn the prayers of the rosary,
and how grateful she was to you

for the gift, and she fingered it
there and then, her thumb and
finger rubbing over the Christ.  
You’d first met her a year or so
before as she sketched the large
gardens you visited as a group.

Her hand guiding the pencil as
the image was translated onto
the sketch pad, her eyes scanning
what it was she wanted to capture
in all its beauty. I like capturing

churches, she had said, watercolours
and pencil or charcoal as my aids.
You remembered words that evening
as she lay there dying from cancer,
the curtained area dim and silent
except for the rattling breath, just Betty

and the rosary in the end, and your
deep love and the unwanted death.