Prayer

Lord, O My Lord, if Death is not the god

I can most believe in, what is? We are animal

bodies on an animal earth — from Death we come

and to Death we return. Here, then

there. Some thread remains. The green-blossom pearly mussel

is extinct yet I do not believe in the end stop

Lord, O my Lord, if I did not forgive the stranger who came to my door

in the moment of his shooting me I swear the bullet was still mid-air

I could not have gone on living. Against that edge of fluke: one-sixteenth of a millimeter

between bullet & brain face down in the landscape of rug, I still push —

the way I’d pushed him instinctual my small body fierce against animal —

when he pulled the gun.

Still, he walked over & through the edge of door

I unlocked.

O, I do believe in Before & After.

Lord, O my Lord, was forgiveness the prayer that linked us?

the amazing thing: forgiveness happened

What else could have collapsed that wall of fear?

I didn't ask to forgive; I just did

Or is “prayer” just another word for “staying here?”

what my body knew it had to do to survive

Now I push word after word after out of this pen.

I am here, alive

in a world of tables and chairs and kitchen windows.

I haven’t seen a bobolink in years.

Lord, O my Lord, when my pen is inkless

I ask of you only this: let it run dry on a line

enjambed