When I Pray This Morning
I am a broken-winged robin hiding in a dry meadow
with fall’s crisp leaves crunching beneath my feet.
Is it a good thing to have chosen such a small
wounded body to imagine myself in?
For weeks my family and friends are crutches.
My thoughts and prayers are with you they say.
I am cancer’s prey, bound with dependence.
I glance at my neighbor from my office window,
feel jealousy towards her freedom sneaking
into my traumatized body.
She cradles an e-cigarette in the corner
of her mouth like a 1930’s movie star.
As she puts her vehicle in reverse, backs into the abyss
of day, smoke drifts from her mouth like incense.
A blood-red scarf hangs from a fencepost.
The altar of tall pickets intimidating as fear.
In the distance, I hear an ambulance’s siren.
This is how some prayers are answered
I supposed—with wailing and flashing lights.
I hold a hot cup of tea; the smoky images of my hands
cover the constant incantation of tears filling my eyes.
Triple Crown
As the world keeps stepping away from itself,
I want to kiss this purple web
of bruised veins in the fold of my left arm
and the needle pricks in my left fingers
where gloved hands touch.
I feel their lives pulsing
as they draw the flow of life from me.
Is it madness to rejoice in this pain, the feel of latex,
the medley—blood pressure, temperature, meds?
Insanity to give gratitude for this fracture,
slowed gait, ticks of pain, dehydrated tears,
and third cancer prognosis?
Conceit to desire a triple crown
of remission?
“Why,” that part of my DNA desires answers…
I do not want to shut myself inside myself
as the world keeps stepping away from itself.
Outside my window I listen to:
my neighbor’s weights clash against each other
as he lifts and curses with labored breath,
a small convention of birds
rehearse warbles and coos,
accompanying their melodies with wingbeats
against new branches
as swells of hope pour into the country of my body.
Even disease cannot drive it out.
Loretta Diane Walker, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is an award-winning poet inspired by a collection of remarkable people and poets, is a nine-time Pushcart Nominee and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2021 William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Fort Worth Poetry Society, 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry for her collection In This House. She has published five collections of poetry, and the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Loretta teaches music in Odessa, Texas.
I am a broken-winged robin hiding in a dry meadow
with fall’s crisp leaves crunching beneath my feet.
Is it a good thing to have chosen such a small
wounded body to imagine myself in?
For weeks my family and friends are crutches.
My thoughts and prayers are with you they say.
I am cancer’s prey, bound with dependence.
I glance at my neighbor from my office window,
feel jealousy towards her freedom sneaking
into my traumatized body.
She cradles an e-cigarette in the corner
of her mouth like a 1930’s movie star.
As she puts her vehicle in reverse, backs into the abyss
of day, smoke drifts from her mouth like incense.
A blood-red scarf hangs from a fencepost.
The altar of tall pickets intimidating as fear.
In the distance, I hear an ambulance’s siren.
This is how some prayers are answered
I supposed—with wailing and flashing lights.
I hold a hot cup of tea; the smoky images of my hands
cover the constant incantation of tears filling my eyes.
Triple Crown
As the world keeps stepping away from itself,
I want to kiss this purple web
of bruised veins in the fold of my left arm
and the needle pricks in my left fingers
where gloved hands touch.
I feel their lives pulsing
as they draw the flow of life from me.
Is it madness to rejoice in this pain, the feel of latex,
the medley—blood pressure, temperature, meds?
Insanity to give gratitude for this fracture,
slowed gait, ticks of pain, dehydrated tears,
and third cancer prognosis?
Conceit to desire a triple crown
of remission?
“Why,” that part of my DNA desires answers…
I do not want to shut myself inside myself
as the world keeps stepping away from itself.
Outside my window I listen to:
my neighbor’s weights clash against each other
as he lifts and curses with labored breath,
a small convention of birds
rehearse warbles and coos,
accompanying their melodies with wingbeats
against new branches
as swells of hope pour into the country of my body.
Even disease cannot drive it out.
Loretta Diane Walker, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is an award-winning poet inspired by a collection of remarkable people and poets, is a nine-time Pushcart Nominee and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2021 William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Fort Worth Poetry Society, 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry for her collection In This House. She has published five collections of poetry, and the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Loretta teaches music in Odessa, Texas.
