Prayer Walk
At summer’s brink,
yellow forsythia haze
dissipates into thunder
and petrichor. Spring
was a memory
of spring.
Bone-thin trees
drift from their roots
in a ditch filled with dark weeds.
Peepers quaver
and go on quavering—
the sound the mind makes
when panic
seizes thought.
But tonight the mind is still,
cinched to silence
by syllables
vibrating through
a loop of beads.
Dispatch #68