Prayer on the edge of the morning

by Judy Kaber

For the slow stretch of highway under slight stars
the frames that hold lost fathers, black and white sisters.

For the chives, weeping in the garden,
yellow and wet with the burrowing season.

For the red squirrel who chatters after nuts
and follows my back with his eye.

For the sprinters, the joggers
the dog walkers, for all the movers of America

going always home, going with no more meaning
than the sounds given from one foot to another,

with no more intent than to move.
Let the jet stream carry my prayers.

Let the prayer be for the grey
that eases between the limbs of the trees,

that brushes my house in the unspent morning,
for the riotous waves dissolving on the shore.

Let the prayer be for all the shadows that slip
between us, for the words we do not say

for the thoughts that we hold like lit cigarettes,
dangling from our mouths, then drop and crush.