Prayer

PRAYER

Of times I pray with words ;
Or else just close my eyes
And listen to rapt birds
Petitioning the skies
With song ;once a deep flood
Of reverence drowned my woes
When a jade-sheathed bud
Unpetaled to a rose .
And when my lips would pray
In a soft-lighted church ,
They found no words to say ;
Strangely ,outside ,a birch ,
So like an angel there
With wings bent to the winds ,
Murmured a truant prayer
My dumb lips could not find .
Bells chiming hymns I knew
Were silvery as the tree
O’ershadowing a pew
Wherein God knelt with me .
Jan Bagwell