Prayer

What is prayer? Waiting, fasting -
cheek damp
across the pages,
knees red stippled in the floor?
Or words, or

silence pressed up in
grunts,
a pulled plow,
yelps like a cut thing?
Tight-faced child in the doctor's chair. It will
be over,
this might hurt
a little.

It is the plower cutting,
It is the earth splitting open:
sow.


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