John Hodgen

ON A WING

— for Bill Holshouser

All day I have been searching for a prayer,

finding only this, this Martinmas,

that there seem to be nephews of prayers everywhere,

even in the bright salvation army of grass

that springs up in the truck tire tracks despite

everything, working its relative, prayerful way to the light,

and in the pea-brained crows, of course, their hope hope hope in
the air.

Still, it is not enough most days, each cousined prayer caught

short somehow, the way we all would look agape, struck dumb,

if some Thanksgiving aunt put us on the spot,

asked us to say grace. What prayers, what feathered words
would come?

We do not come to prayers. Like sisters they come to us,

wordless, like stones, like the open-mouthed face on a
sarcophagus.

I have seen this today, my makeshift prayer: a man in a torn serape

who pumped my gas and looked like my long-lost brother,

and a toy stuffed rabbit wrapped in yellow CAUTION tape

tied like a Christmas wreath, like a looney smile, to the bumper
of a maintenance truck in the parking lot.

And I have told a girl who said she was a monster that she was
not.

A prayer then for my friend, who is not dead, for every breath
he’s got,

for the gas man, my brother, the caution rabbit, monster girl, the
whole lot,

for the bills, for the holes in this house, the wind that comes in and
pays no rent,

for the heaven we do not go to, for the heaven that is sent.