What Now, Praying?

 

By Kimberly Cloutier Green

 

Heart, you softy, you sap – you’re getting fat,

breaking into dumbfounded tears in your sleep

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and waking bedazzled by ordinary light,

the old cat in a heap of dreams beside you.

 

There was a time I hardly knew you

were there – thin as air! –

cool customer, smart answer.

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Now you babble like a fool,

you’re a thief in my throat –

I can’t tell anymore where joy gives way

to grief and grief to joy.

 

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Sack in my chest, common store of wishbones,

see how you greet the day?

Leaving the house in slippers?

Opening wider as if you could bear more?

 

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2013 by Kimberly Cloutier Green. Reprinted from “The Next Hunger,” Bauhan Publishing, by permission of Kimberly Cloutier Green. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, special consultant to the Maine poet laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 228-8263. “Take Heart: Poems from Maine,” an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.


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