LEARNING HOW TO PRAY was first published in the Atlantic Monthly and is included in Cathy’s second book of poetry, Traveling in Time of Danger, due out from Iris Press this fall.

LEARNING HOW TO PRAY

When I heard my brother
was dying    youngest
of the six of us    our
lovely boy    I who in matters
of the spirit
had been always suspect
who even as a child
snubbed Mama’s mealtime ritual
began finally to
pray    and fearing
I would offend
or miss completely
the rightful target of my pleas
went knocking everywhere
the Buddha’s huge
and starry churning    Shiva
Vishnu    Isis    the worn
and ragged god of Ishmael
I bowed to the Druid reverence
of trees    prayed to weather
to carbon    that sole link
to all things
this and other worldly
our carbon who art in heaven
prayed to rake and plow
the sweet acid stench of dung
to fly    to the fly’s soiled
wing    and to the soil

I could not stop
myself    I like a nymphomaniac
the dark promiscuity
of my spirit    there
for the taking    whore
of my breaking heart    willing
to lie down    with anything.

©Cathy Smith Bowers, 1997, 1998.