A Poet’s Mind Wanders during the Lord’s Prayer
A Poet’s Mind Wanders during the Lord’s Prayer
Laurie Klein
Our Father,
wherever the wild irises grow,
their colors like bruises, the petals
let down their delicate lips
to sing in threes, while shyer
sisters furl their silk: a frilled throat.
Sire of the triune alleluia, who is in heaven,
use my voice.
On the street there’s a man; I know
you see him: his skin, slack, almost
translucent, his eyes like the small wet pans
of a child’s paint box. How do I help?
I’m told he alone survived the blast;
his family, gone. Neither cursing his god, nor mine,
he inhabits peace I cannot explain—his speech
a river of stones rounded by love.
So, hallowed be, Haloed One. Your name
is Mercy. Riddle. Breath.
Rivering Word, guard the song
given to me, long before
I failed your world—for I am
complicit in the unmaking.
Harrow me, Rock of Ages,
sunder this hardpan heart. Your kingdom
come—amid rumor and rubble.
Your will be done on earth as it is.
Meanwhile, in heaven, a psalmist stands by
his word: one perfect vine
grew into our aching world. How long,
O Lord, until the next budding?
Give us this day the singing rinse of light,
bruise-blue, violet, red. Glass blooms
between soaring walls of stone; reflections
color my throat, a neighbor’s jaw,
an enemy’s tongue: ephemeral skin
a living palette, each breath our daily bread—
though sometimes, we choke.
Forgive us. You grieved in a garden
and over a city
peopled with stones. Even now
our lifted hands brim, bearing
our sins, the rift of emptiness. Show us
your palms, your adamant spade,
your fertile, searching glance, as we
forgive those who have sinned against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
for how slyly in garden or field
tiny eggs hatch insatiable worms,
tunneling down, down
the iris stems, from ravaged buds
to roots, rhizomes. Deliver us
from evil lest, end-to-no-end,
our graves take over more ground.
Father, I still hear teeth;
also, a hymn; sometimes,
a bomb.
Make our forever a wingdom.
A bower. A kite unspooling
like petals, into blue,
all our ragtag string played out, Amen.
Laurie Klein
Poet
Laurie Klein is the author of the poetry collections Where the Sky Opens (2015) and House of 49 Doors (2024); both are from Poiema/Cascade.
Photography by Alexander Mass