It is the first day of spring. The gods have delivered inches of snow. A thin line of crocus stalks are teeming at the edge of a flagstone. Life is holding to a stationary orbit but struggling. A minister posted she would pray each morning and asked: How can I pray for you? This is a human prayer.
A Prayer on Your Wires copyright 2020, Vincent Hostak From the end of a copper wire then the air a minister’s voice signals “For Whom Should I Pray, Today? Leave Your Comment. I Will Speak Them.” Today? For those I will not visit for their safety not a casual breath will pass. For the cashier, who’s fingernails are each a different glossy hue clutching the currency passed and bagging the beans and milk. For the letter carrier, we forgot, still distributes our gratitude, our well wishes quiet from a large world, to dull colored mail drops. For the peace officer by the phone, the cook and expediter whose holy eyes scan curls of braising cabbage, whose hands wrap parchment, box a gift to nourish. A teacher reworking what was already troubled once to make it small enough to travel cables, arrive total and rich to a still new mind. The doctor, nurse upon the sixteenth hour, i hope not to see you, but to hear your breath singing of sweet sleep from miles away. Even from this isolation, your every movements stir air around us in ways we can’t ignore it whistles with your hope whirrs with your industry is scripted with your courage and encoded with your devotion. we have chosen to see only shortages and you have shown us abundance.
Wild, Abandoned: 2021 