A PRAYER

Driving through Sudbury
                 at midnight,
  by the old church steeples,
             beneath a hunter’s moon,
I saw,

             spectral-like, the ancient
    graveyard spread out before
me, so blue and luminescent,

   and I thought of Thankful, and
Jabez, and Puffy’s other relatives
        there, sleeping the sleep of
centuries,

and between heart beats
                 murmured softly
    this prayer,

                                        “Not yet.”


October 14, 2000