This was meant to be a quiet kind of morning,
a hush wide enough to lay old ghosts flat.
But when does Quietude ever sleep
in the sheets we so tenderly set before Him?
Does He not prefer to find us
between the sweat-grooved lines
at the grocery store, where he catches us
in the frostbit stare of salmon steaks,
the iced-over murk of their unseeing eyes—
just shut up, he says, holding
a crooked finger to our cracked lips.
These casualties are sacred.
But how can we grant Him this small, holy nothing?
We would be too ashamed to stand there doe-eyed
and drooling, dumb and pink as a cold cut
stinging under the fluorescent lights.
It is no matter anyhow, the line shuffles forward.
The bag-lady will soon be asking how many?
and the clerk this much,
and in the midst of so much noise,
when we crave His silence the most,
what are we to do but push our carts past the
watermelon stand where the homeless sleep
and pretend our prayers aren’t the same.