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Thursday, October 26, 2023

PRAYER FOR THE NON-BELIEVER

by Alan Walowitz


Romano-British iron ploughshare. Flat bar with rounded edges tapering to an asymmetrical point at one end, with a flanged socket at the other. —The British Museum


C’mon, we can pray as well as anyone
If we only suspend our disbelief and try. 
The bombs are dropping on a hospital
So we pray, at least, it wasn’t us. 
Is that too much?  Not enough?  If so,
Then let’s go all the way
And pray that the bombs will stop,
Let them be bursting in air, 
The way we’ve always sung 
About them since the time we were young.
 
Or better yet,
Beaten into ploughshares. 
Though we’ve never known what ploughshares are,
Oh, God, if you’re out there, I swear,
I’m gonna call Amazon and order some.


Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.