after Wesley McNair


And so many of us.
How can we expect Him
to keep track of which voice
goes with what request.
Words work their way skyward.
Oh, Lord, followed by petition---
for a cure, the safe landing.
For what is lost, missing---
a spouse, a job, the final game.
Complaint cloaked as need---
the faster car, the porcelain teeth.
That so many entreaties
go unanswered
may say less about our lamentable
inability to be heard
than our inherent flawed condition.

Why else, at birth, the first sound
we make, that full-throttled cry?
Of want, want, want.
Of never enough. Desire
as embedded in us as the ancestral tug
in my unconscienced dog who takes
to the woods, nose to the ground, pulled far
from domesticated hearth, bowl of kibble.
Left behind, I go about my superior business,
my daily ritual I should call prayer.

But look, this morning, in my kitchen,
I'm not asking for more of anything.
My husband slices bread,
hums a tune from our past.
Eggs splatter in a skillet.
Wands of lilac I stuck in a glass
by the window wobble
in a radiant and---dare I say it?---
merciful light.

-Deborah Cummings from "Counting the Waves"