Kneel?
Not while I can still stand.
Book of Prayers
Heretic’s Prayer
Mother’s prayer
Child, how your sweetness at the breast fills me,
As I flow into you.
Prayer for the dead
I looked in the library and found a book
Open where he had been reading.
Prayer of a poor man
Mine is an old tale,
Tired and cold and of no interest.
Prayer of a sick man.
They say that when I came here,
(I remember the smell of smoke)
Thanksgiving
My certain marriage to the earth was sundered.
The sky’s fabric thundered, rent in the instant
The warriors’ prayer
The women are drawn apart, singing their own lays
Their backs aching and the earth still so hard.