APrayer

If I wrote one today, it would not concern our place in the universe

or relation to its creator,



not even the red late sun sinking behind the sinking mall.

These are adequately acknowledged elsewhere.



It might mention her scarf

but not her shoes.



It won’t ask for anything today, though not because the pray-er does not covet

anything. He covets all.



Perhaps then it should concern the lifting-away of desire,

but at what cost?



If I sung one today its words would not make sense,

not like speaking in tongues, closer to scat.

It would come from some yet-to-be-named place inside,

its meaning unnamed too.



If I knelt on the kitchen floor to pray one today

my first thoughts would be of my knees against my ribs,

of the smallness of one body in a tiled room.



I’d feel the air there as I let go my hands

remember the window, the breeze

on the other side of the pane, that call

to the end of one day.



—appeared originally in The Marlboro Review