Secular Sunday

Huntington Beach, CA

Prayer During a Time My Son is Having Seizures

Finally I just leaned on the door-frame, a

woman without belief, praying

please don't let anything happen to him.

Don't let him stand there and his gold

jaw lock while he watches the burning

mountain falling slowly through his mind and

no word comes to him.

Don't let him stand there like a tree with its

green branch lopped off and

falling slowly away, the tiny

amber cones already darkening,

don't let him fall like the lip of a 

cliff coming off, a heavy tuft

stuck with white berry blossoms

sliding down the raw bluff of his life,

don't let him stand on the curb watching his

mind get hit by a blue car

over and over, there is nothing he can do about it.

Don't hurt him, I cry out,

don't take his thoughts away as a 

kid will rip toys from another kids' hands,

don't go up to his small dazzling

brain in spangles on the high wire

and push it off. There is no net.

Don't leave him in a wheelchair drooling into

cereal, not knowing the dark

holes are raisins. And yet if that's the

only way I can have him, I want to

have him, to look deep into his face and

see just the avenues of light,

empty and spacious, to put on his bib

as I once did, and spoon brown sugar

into the river of his life.

I'll change his dark radiant diapers, I'll

scrape the blue mold that collects in the creases of his elbows,

I will sit with him in his room for the rest of my days,

I will have him on any terms.

Sharon Olds