Like George Herbert Prayer is a bargain for the skin-flint heart. A hymnal singing in a hijacked brain, empty folding chairs before a stage. Words with soul, like basso ostinato. The uses of refrain. The soldier waving with his phantom arm, tire marks where the pickup missed the fawn, flagons of light spilling tears on a burned out lawn, a teenage girl unaware of her charm. The silence of a prelapsarian age. No past to hold our gaze, no prisoners to crucify, no jealous god to praise. A universe unconscious of itself. A self, unconscious of its song. Barbara DeCoursey Roy
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