Prayer (The Ledge)
You think it’s in the skull,
behind the eyes, a room
you make and then walk into.
You think it’s the feeling
of desperate thirst
that sometimes arises
after you’ve begun to drink
deeply, when it’s only ever been
the feeling you got
when finally, after many weeks
of staring at the impeccable
outline the dove’s body left
when it crashed into your office
window, open-winged, and died,
you finally hung your ass
onto the ledge and wiped it
away with a damp
Kleenex: the completion
of a perfect and miserable task.
Most often there is nothing —
really nothing — and the whole thing
feels like an idea you gave yourself,
like hypochondria, or even more
distant, the memory of hypochondria,
and even that idea is a place
you can’t be right now, because right now
you are in the car, waiting out
the endless light at the corner
of MLK and Congress when the baby
suddenly says, Song Mommy song now.