Advent Poem
       

Teach me to read more closely how the sun
kneels, then encapsulates when it begins to pray,
the whole day coming, rising,
foreshortening the depth of the night's woundings.

Which wounds, Wind asks, circling these lines, always,
always Wind around me, double, doubling, doubting.

Shut up and join the prayer circle I'm forming,
Aeolus, I answered, to mythologize his presence.
By this time, it is morning, gold, splendiferous,
the tint of the miraculous on leaf and stem,
on my lips as I speak. I pray, my only offering
for prayer to be these lines, rupture, fracture,
my signature, my spoor, one second's legacy—

my panoply of asking to be fed or not.
My grace, in any case, gods, if I'm asking—

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Copyright © 2020 Peter Cooley All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission