Elsewhere in Dreams

Prayer

Lord, I’d like to thank you for
the glass in my throat
and how you’re teaching me
to swallow difficult things:
it reminds me of swinging round
the pole and the stitches
between my toes.

And thank you for giving me
two birds in a bush:
you’re reminding me of
nursing robins back to health,
of watching them bobble
off after worms.

Thank you helplessness
at the hands of apes with scalpels
and breadcrumbs (not so long
ago I was a bird, I was a boy).

One more thing. There’s something
I’ve been tossing up in the air
and catching on a regular basis;
if you could slip it into
my pocket, I’d be ever so
grateful.