People are praying.
The concierge is praying
And the head of the security guard
Is bowed in prayer
And Hermione Gunifedes is praying
Amid the clutter on her desk.There is nothing to say about this prayer
Except to notice it as one does,
Not like the spinning wheels on a speeding truck
Or the flight path of the capricious sparrow
In sync with bursting spring
But more akin to the constancy
Of an unmoving wall.Once I rode a bus
Of silver and green away from the city
And into a park
Where marshmallows and franks
Were speared on sticks and held in
A fire of burning wood. Heaven was
In the daylight run of children through the fields
And in the cautionary words of nuns in black as well,
Prayer holding no degree of urgency back then.
It was only the wonder of our breath and the red Keds
On which I sped.But now here, in the cubicle spaces of the org,
Are people praying: Celia Duarte and
Solomon Cesnow and Fortuna Glover and
Cameron Sofler and Agnes Gant and
Alcibiades Malincourt and Buford Reheboth.At all hours of the day
A silence envelops the org.
At all hours.April 2004