Archive > Vol. 21 no. 2

Stephen Ackerman

A Simple Prayer

So deep has been my belief in insurance, I think
It may have displaced my belief in G-d, who,
Cisgender or transgender, permeable like a cloud
Or impervious like a stone,
Does not protect us against
Property loss or damage, against collision, or disability,
Short-term or long-term, or death, accidental
Or natural, or illness or injury, who, divine, professes
To be omniscient, provides coverage,
Through penance and prayer, sacrament
And psalm, that is not comprehensive
And does not stay suffering and who is, therefore, arguably,
Less powerful than the couriers who are by snow or rain or gloom
Of night not stayed from the swift completion of their appointed rounds
And if they are not, and if G-d is distracted by the sparrows
Falling from the sky, then, of course, the clot traveling
Through the miles and miles of your body
To the brain and causes a stroke that renders you
Speechless, will not be stayed by G-d,
Then what prayers can you form
In the twilight of your thought, if your thoughts
Have not already been extinguished, a full eclipse
Of the sun, in one of the days of your life.
I could see speech moving speechlessly across
The clay of your face and so formed my own prayer.
“Help me,” I said to myself, and so I helped myself.
After death, not my own, I prepared for the calamities to come.
“Help me,” was the heartfelt prayer
I never spoke aloud, though I could hear my thoughts,
Sacred and profane, interrupted on occasion
By those two words, addressed to nobody
Other than myself; my sorrow silent, my grief taciturn.
If it was a prayer, it was a balm,
As cash is a balm for the impoverished. I drew
Down that small allowance of words from an account
I had opened as a child. The interest compounded
Daily. Now I owned a great treasury of words
And phrases. I spent them sparingly. I spent
The words “Beat, heart.”