DIRT AND SONG

Raucous Prayer

By Patrick Rosal

Here, my one raucous prayer

coaxed from this poor drum,

my double heart, under a beat-up slat

of divine light. It’s habit: I evade 

the foreseeable blessing, this thorn

thief, this fiend for deep bass 

and the dynamics of  burning— 

now bird, now furnace, I’m returning

to love itself. Let me face 

the beginning of sound, first horn, 

origin of dirt and song. We are made

by touch, not terror for tat, 

but one humble pulse in a numb 

abyss. Bet, god breathes this air.