Poem February 4, 1985 Issue

The breath of prayer

MAURICE JAY

The streetlamp pours its pale wash
across the still wet bricks,
and the summer's breeze
is an eddying of invisible feathers
across my gazing face.
If my thought rested lightly,
like the wind—were undiminished
by sweeping across the hills and lawns
of a vast sleeping city ....
If it should move so freely
and always bring a gentleness, a presence
senses cannot see, nor encase
in lifeless form .... It is thus
I would bring a healing touch
to someone out there
open, too, to a tenderness
in the dark, a darkness
that, in this presence, has become
light
for a city that has no need of sun
or moon, but only of the whisper
of this glory.