a ghost posed on my lips

Water's Edge (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

PrayerBy Jorie Graham

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl   

themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the   

way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-

                                                                      infolding,

entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a   

visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by   

minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the   

dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where   

they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into   

itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly   

invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing

                                    motion that forces change—

this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets   

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by

each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,   

also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something   

at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through   

in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is   

what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen   

now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only   

something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.   

I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.   

It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

NOTES: PRAYER (“minnows”) was written as a turn-of-the-millennium poem for the New York Times Op-Ed page, and was originally dated 12.31.00