Deliverance
Free Verse
As I walked out of the subway exit,
I thought I heard prayers
the kind that would seep out of
stained glass windows
in the Old City of Jerusalem,
serenading the doves and stray cats.
I envisioned the prayers
scribbled on notes
clutched in siddurs
running through thoughts
fighting to take flight,
like an eagle soaring
east through soundwaves,
waving a wave of energy
blessing her thoroughly.
But then I realized it was just
the wind tunnel
funneling unaddressed messages
that had become mute and impotent,
yet howling the unspeakable,
pushing them from our parched lips,
filling us with the hope of the unutterable word,
but like a mediator, failing to mediate
the prayers fall
into a lifeless heap of leaves,
forming a vacuum that inhales our souls
into a brown paper bag that chokes us.
