Pray for This
- Pray for This
Go ahead—before it’s too late—get up—now—off your knees.Blow out the candle. Stop the prayer,the incessant plea, for safety, oh God,from the unexpected—
the blast preparing its ravagesin quiet spaces below—the mawaround the corner or (who knows?)already at the door—the thinguncoiling beyond the wall.
Get up—while you can—and leavethis room. Walk—don’t crawl.Keep your sight line level and—pray for this—your senses whole,safe from sicklied hope.
If you can’t—if this is all—allis not lost. For your sake—look up—eyes forward—past the flameinto the shadows. Contemplate—this is important—a likely worst—
the door may slam open and infly a ripping torrent of peace. [End Page 135]
David Hathwell is a former English teacher living and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has degrees in English, from Stanford and Columbia, as well as an advanced degree in music theory, from CUNY, and is now a piano student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His poems appear in The MacGuffin, Raintown Review, Slant, Driftwood Press, Measure, and Timberline Review, and online at Cider Press Review, Blast Furnace, Angle, and Cordite Poetry Review. Muses, a chapbook, is forthcoming from David Robert Books.
