Approaching Prayer

When he was young, words

came easily, the naming

of portraits in the maternity ward,

lyrics to children’s songs.

But now, reconciliation,

the theme of memory,

is lost like the moon

behind late September’s ceaseless clouds.

He recalls Adam:

Before he had yet begun to work

by the sweat of his brow,

before those many curses

and the perpetual decline that now

defines what has become history,

before first born and first

death     rivalry     sacrifice,

he was given the impossible task of naming.

In the silence of early fall,

of dew that will never rise,

in the room where words

are all there is,

and thought,

he remembers that Adam

hadn’t been there when light

was named and so became,

when land and sea

were formed with a word,

or when, having been molded,

he was brought to life

with a whisper.

In some proto-Babel jargon,

Adam began to create

by naming—a woman,

a garden—after a model

he had never heard before. 

And here, in the empty upper room

of his house, where

a mosquito, having fed

to satiety on his legs,

leaves him with something

far more than blood,

no words come,

creation ceases

for a time,

the whole world pauses

its diurnal grind

and awaits the final reconciliation

of a day’s end:

Now I lay me down to sleep

and pray the egregious prayer

that the Lord will keep

some of the work for himself.