Poem Of The Week: 04/16/2005

	Poet's Prayer

		–After Matthew 6: 1-18

Our writers
who art in large rooms
where–by the wrong color fliers,
the football game on the same night as the reading,
the newspapers who shunned the press releases,
or God

knows what–
only six people art in attendance,
including thy family members:
hallowed be thy name.

For, as the evangelist said,
those who pray and shout and give their alms in concert halls or on TV,
verily I say unto you, they
have their rewards already;

whereas you, reading poems
in hiding, in exile, in closets,
in the wilderness, in the belly of the whale,
to chairs and faces
and chairs and chairs,

our Father
who seeth in secret Himself
has thy reward waiting openly.

So know thee:
that espresso machine blasting
may be the Heavenly host's delighted sighs, so God

bless it.
That drunken table outshouting the PA, God
bless their hazy souls.
The celphone blaring Handel's Messiah in the middle of your poem, God
bless, God bless.

And those thousands in thy community
watching Fear Factor tonight instead of coming to thy reading,
they only secure thy reward in Heaven;

so delight in these six with you in the room,
hold them in thy heart,
for these blessed few
are themselves holy:

bless you;
bless you;
bless us, every one;

bless this whispering God, whose
is the power and the kingdom and the glory
for ever and ever, so

amen.

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