Today's poem is by Todd Davis

April Prayer
       

Where snow disappeared a month ago, I trace my fingers

          to wake dirt. In darkness coyotes dragged the carcass

of the doe they'd run down into a tangle of rhododendron.

          If I'm to pray, I must become the thing I pray to: flesh rent,

fur reformed into tufts of hair like the fans my aunts wave

          under their chins in church. My lips scoured

by uninterrupted light, not a single tree leafed out.

          Just words in empty air, for that deer

and those coyotes, for the beauty of the devoured

          and the ones who devour.

Tweet
Copyright © 2023 Todd Davis All rights reserved
from The Greensboro Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission