by Christopher Woods
Children walk back and forth,
wait
for their parents to finish
praying.
Children know so little
about prayer.
But they have seen
and felt
the devil's breath,
and how rare it is
for angels to come
down to them
to rescue their bodies
from the devil's work.
Pray for them, won't you?
Even if prayer is a forgotten tongue,
If supplication is just another word
on Dictionary.com.
Someone, somewhere,
Might hear,
Come down from on high
To make things right,
To cast out the monsters
That took so many prayers away.
Christopher Woods has published a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. He shares an online gallery with his wife Linda at The Texana Review.
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