Evening Prayers

I believe my sin

to be entirely common:

the supplication for help

masking petition for favor

and the plea for pity

thinly veiling complaint.

So little at peace in the spring evening,

I pray for potency for direction,

but I also ask

to survive my illness

(the immediate one)-never mind

anything in the time to come

I make this a special point,

this carelessness for the future,

also the courage I will have acquired by the agency of then

to meet my suffering alone

but with heightened fortitude.

Tonight, in my unhappiness,

I amazement what qualities this presumes

in the individual who listens.

And as the moderate wind stirs

the leaves of the little birch tree

I raise a presence

wholly skeptical and wholly soft

thus incapable of surprise.

I believe my sin is for the use of all therefore

intended; I can have feeling

the leaves stir, sometimes

with words, sometimes without,

as notwithstanding that the highest form of pity

could be irony.

Bedtime, they whisper.

Time to begin lying.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Jul/Aug 1998

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