Sunday, December 4, 2016

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

11 comments:

  1. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love Sharon Olds. She's a big inspiration for writing or thinking or living or whatever I'm doing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Never saw this before. Incredibly powerful. Here's another:


    http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1985-02-18#folio=044

    ReplyDelete
  4. For a person that does not pray that is one of the most raw and powerful prayers ever. The things we allow our hearts to go through in the name of love.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Such beautiful and heart wrenching words of despair and holy love.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a powerful poem; so many of my own feelings and thoughts are in it.

    ReplyDelete