Praying to Small Gods
August 28, 2009
Praying to Small Gods
The pose mothers take at the end of the day, in the silence,
cheeks blushed by night light, is the bowing of relief.
Sleep, the current that sways, ready to buoy
children into a kelp forest’s slackened safety,
there, but gone from her.
They kneel at the foot of the bed.
Between inhale and exhale, between prayer and answer,
they dwell in the pause. They have done everything
they could. They have done nothing much.
