Dry Prayer

After Jorie Graham

The knowable things are

prescriptions

sparrow nests

hazard signs.

The unknowable things are

birth

pavement

neuropathy.

The plow turns seeds sown over last season

to become nothing

to become everything that binds this.

Briefly dawn serves a cure.

Gossamer light a promise towards revolt.

Again disappearances become real. We

find ourselves in darkness

with a name that we know.

Mass accumulates to nothing.

I see no evidence of blight.

Chrysalis resurrections

crucifixions

fiction

all the same.

Again the green

clandestine.

Arresting silence overcomes dirt.

I hold a petal as a stopgap

cut into a bulb bursting fever.

In the melt everything could be satiated

if you didn’t know better.

This world can be known

& good.

Strangers wander

confusing ash for snow

running red tongues along arms

along root systems.

This is called faith.

After the taste of wheatgrass

the finding of linguistics

the moving past cornstalks

after everything day changes

My fear is plain.

Nobody gets to be pure.

In all of this living

I might become better.