Prayer


By Pavel Chichikov

All messengers are angels, and the lesser ones are

Thermal-riding hawks, foreboding crows and ravens

Agile swifts, athletic gulls and plunging pelicans

Cranes that lumber and the geese like cannon-shot

From silent catapults, ducks on analeptic wings

And furtive, dapple-shadowed wrens and finches

But greater ones ascending from the mind

Do not appear in motion but impel our motion –

Migrate nowhere, feed nor build a nest

Nor sing to hold supremacy of trees –

They rise through us into our eyes

And fill the world with sovereign surprise

And then with light uncommon they ascend

In ways no bird or human comprehends


(Click here to follow Pavel's ongoing epic poem “The Shoulder of the Sun.” You may visit Pavel's website at http://www.greyowlpress.com.)

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