Day 24: PRAYER

O GOD, GREAT POET

you who hold
all words in your wind,
whom thunder commends,
who sizzles, who slams, toward you I bend
to listen again, yearning for frames
to name the end of all I endeavor
to live. Come wend
your whisper
in me.



IMAGES FOR PRAYING

I pray for my fellow poets this day:
Like stray dogs, take us, each one, in
whimpering, love us to calm again
with good and gentle guiding hands
and soothing voice, GOD, take us in.

I pray for my fellow creatures this day:
Like radiated rice fields farmed by hand
for eighteen generations in Japan,
soak our toxins away and tend,
in Nature’s time, our seeds to spring.



THE POET’S O ANTIPHONS (REVISED)

O Living Word, who speaks all tongues,
I pray that this wrestling I do with words
is worthy.

O Word Living, who remembers all voices,
I pray PAD makes a dent in the world
for good.

O Beauty, who mourns as Green Weeping Willow,
I pray that my prayer may always moan
as poetry.

O Goodness of All, who smiles as Red Tulips,
I pray that my poetry may always laugh
like prayer.

O Unknown One, who hides in all things,
I pray that our verses rise from deep struggles
of living.

O Holy One, who hears all things,
I pray that our voices sound from deep springs
of listening.