depth I stroke against
even as I hold my breath to enter,
still holding to a vision of myself
in prayer’s ripples gleaming darkly.
Sometimes the inner sea sends up a swell,
a depth I stroke against.
I am not allowed to enter there
still holding to a vision of myself.
Still, when the inner sea sends up its swell,
sometimes I am mercifully swallowed.
Why I Am Not Quite a Buddhist
God has many eyes
in the bark of the birch.
Not one blinks as I walk past
or winces at what wafts
through my mind’s branches.
Each eye is wide, solemn
as the eye of the doe tonight
holding me in her sights
as I wash lettuce leaves
before the window and she nips
seeds from the birdfeeder.
When she tiptoes off with half
the birds’ booty in her belly,
the sky in me widens like laughter,
bristles with stars, each an eye
opening wide as it can, ravenous
for this world’s bounty.
The Gulf
Each night when I was eight
I lay me down to pray:
Bless Mom and Dad and Jen and Jill,
bless Mona and Granddad, bless . . .
Oh, the list would bore you.
And each night the arms of my prayer
reached farther and farther beyond the cave
of covers, past our house, our city, our country . . .
Everything, even the stars, needed my blessing.
My parents were watching the news
when I called out: In a few minutes
tell me to stop saying my prayers.
My fervor frightened them.
Now there is a term for it:
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But it was order I believed in,
and I was at its center.
Then one day without warning
the fever of my faith broke,
and I was cured. I was grown
and had a life like many others:
husband, job, two children.
And I knew how not to pray.
But tonight on the news there is war:
a broken face I can’t stand to see.
A POW—a pilot—his shoulders
folded in like ruined wings.
There is an enemy. There must be.
They are his torturers.
Or they are my leaders.
Or it is the camera—an eye like God’s
that sees pain and accepts it
Of one thing I am certain:
this man suffers for our sins—
but which ones: omission or commission?
Obsession or compulsion? There must be
some disorder we can name it, and some cure
for how we lay us down, for how we sleep.
Antiphon
On the way to the monastery I get pissed
at a guy parked too long at the pump
while I wait to fill my tank. I see him
inside laughing with his girlfriend
and the cashier, purchasing lottery tickets,
which, I guess, is his form of prayer.
But I don’t care. My motor is running
and he’s in my way. I have to get prayed
in by the guest porter by 4:30
or I’ll miss supper and Vespers.
I don’t yell or anything, but how
is he supposed to answer when I criticize
his lack of courtesy? Fuck you, you bitch,
he says, grabbing his crotch, to which
I respond by flipping him the bird
as I roar off, heart beating like wings,
pondering the way a simple case of being late
fueled by impatience can flare into a conflagration.
And wondering how, in just 45 minutes,
I can be transfigured, become a woman
worthy of the Psalms.
I make it there in time, though my heart
is still revving in my chest as the cantor leads
us in chanting one of those psalms asking
God to smite our wicked foes,
