Prayer

If I were in a book it would be the book

in which some lesser angel bemoans

the state of my soul

and is comforted for it

and is corrected for it

by some greater angel who knows

as the reader knows that it is not one’s soul

that suffers the indignities of ignobility:

the inability to curb the petty smallness

of spirit, ungladness in the company

of bureaucrats, anger’s decay,

in the sense that my soul itself cannot be

harmed nor tarnished though it can witness

my sorrow on finding that illness alters me

from the self I thought I’d more or less known.

What can one do about one’s nature?

I look at the spider that’s finally

restrung its great wheel away from the door.

I’d like to close the door, go away,

leaving the spider be.

I’d like to preclude the possibility

of angel, as of prey.