I wonder if the prayer “deliver me from evil” speaks not of little sins.
Lies told, sex, even.
Temptation that you beg to be delivered from can’t be, I don’t think,
that package of potato chips that beckons, six aisles back,
across the kale and the green beans.
The spark of anger rising in my throat and shouted out
that time I found the dog nose-deep in cherry pie
does not appear (no matter how I peer at it) sufficient cause
for calling heaven down to save me.
Perhaps some day a man (crisp shirt, red tie)
will stand upon my doorstep, tract in hand and lay it out,
how a spark becomes the flames; how being human sends you headlong into hell.
But until he arrives, punching my doorbell to set me straight,
I’ll tell you what I think,
or thought, last night,
when the leaves were so heavy with green they drooped,
and one way was sunset and the other was clear blue sky.
I thought the great temptation, the one that warrants daily prayer,
must be temptation to despairing.
That hollow left when sorrow lifts, and grief, like wind, dies down.
The voice that says there’s only this:
Anger, sex, potato chips.
Some waxy beans beneath fluorescent light.
At certain times, I heed its call, walk undelivered towards its beckoning,
then grow so lost within that I —
cannot hear the birdsong, nor let the mist that rises off the dewgrass fill my soul.
My soul unfilled, I seek to fill my body up
with anger, sex, potato chips,
these things which do not satisfy.
And so consuming, I’m consumed;
Spark becomes flame, and all of it a raging, driving me back and back
into that hollow left when sorrow lifts;
the twisted voice: There’s only this.
In the end it is that driving which drives me to my knees.
Prayer prays itself, strong hands, wrinkled, pulling me up,
the song from a thrush I cannot see:
There’s this, and this, and more than this, and you, my child are all of this —
leaves heavy, mist rising,
a droplet on the dewgrass, perfectly spherical, reflecting the light;
a drink for the cricket there, standing on his back legs, observing you.
You’re all of this and one with this; remember when you’re held like this,
in this, the great deliverance, to look —
that way lies the sunset,
and this is always clear blue sky.