Praying
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Praying
In the garden early, I'mtransplanting echinacea while robins and flycatchers
confirm that our winter—complicated and compoundedby COVID—has succumbed to spring at last.
I'm spinning over and over the question that consumes me:are we in a chrysalis or only hibernating?
Even now, are we dissolvingtransforming, irrevocably changing?
If we can cooperate globally to protect human life in a pandemic,can we leave war behind, discard it like diapers and training wheels?
And what about pollution—now that we breathe measurably cleaner air,will we outgrow fossil fuels and embrace a future worthy of the name?
Plant, water, tamp down; plant, water, tamp down: can you tell mewill we emerge changed? Or just more hungry? [End Page 155]
Julie Cadwallader Staub grew up with five sisters beside one of Minnesota's lakes. Her favorite words to hear were, "Now you girls go outside and play." She now lives and writes from her home near Burlington, VT. Staub's poems have been published in journals and anthologies, including in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems. Her two collections of poems are Face to Face (2010) and Wing Over Wing (2019).
