prayer leaves the lips like leaves

1.
Prayer leaves the lips like leaves
fallen on the surface of that water
which moves slowest down streams.

2.
Behind quiet
we were afraid to stay.

Behind the boredom and fidgeting
of hours, the feeling of God
staring
pins one down
so that it is difficult to breath. Behind

God—the dishes pile up, a woman
on 5th street drools outside the convalescent
home, the birds on Fourth Street and Cherry
swoop down from telephone wires and poles
in flurries, electric inner city, mad with
the littered lots, the tagged walls, the shuffling
psychosis of an elder man who yells into pay phones,
the indifferent gleaming of traffic, the window shops,
and one styrofoam coffee cup atop a public mailbox.

3.
It was so hot today everyone was buying icecream
from the truck with its high pitched static melodies.

But the day will get cooler in a few hours. We can
open the windows then and let the warmth go
from inside, let slight breezes be, let the sky be
still faintly lit.

4.
Asleep later, I took my unhappiness
off like a bundle from my travel weary back
and tossed it down at the base of a silouetted tree,
his crazy arms thrown up above the black rim of earth.

We can rest our minds just like that.

5.
Some crazy men have resisted all dark
to follow the fleeing edge of light,
and it has always meant not stopping.