Prayer
// Anthony Butts
Out for a walk, in the pre-dawn hour, to clear my thoughts
I prepared to round the corner as the sound of a train
came upon my ears-believing that it stood as some sort of impediment
when, in reality, it became the basis for verse,
its rectangular containers of commerce flinging past
as I approached the tracks step by step:
a large yellow bulb beyond intermittently snuffed out
and recharged as the divisions between cars revealing it
continued on. It was time to move on, I thought,
as I continued to approach, no matter how long
I would stand there awaiting its passing, the past
is now firmly in the past. It was time to move on,
the train slowing down as I neared the intersection
to see that I wouldn’t have to stop moving forward
as the end slowly crept past in time for me to cross
without breaking my stride. I now take pride
in that first great train ride, that would usher me into poetry,
to Western Michigan University and the city
of Kalamazoo-knowing (then) that I had to begin anew.
The landscape undulated wildly like my life.
The landscape took me in during the sub-zero months
where I’d go for nighttime walks to meditate
and be with God beneath stars that shown only then
like catapulted snowflakes immortalized
in the sky, the always gray winter days a counterpoint
instead of a catastrophe for the music that played
within me. On this morning, I progressed down a major
thoroughfare after leaving it all behind-the train
a well placed reminder by my Creator that I’m never alone
as I averted my glance from a man emptying
dozens upon dozens of beer bottles from the municipal
containers outside a local pub, merely bearing lessons
of the past now in what my mother told me about the impolite
nature of staring at men while they worked.
I have honored the past all I can with my poetry,
that part of me now sutured and sound —
no longer to allow parts of me to seep onto the ground.
I turned my back on the sanitation worker
to head back toward home, noticing after I’d crossed
the street that the area’s latest apartment complex
had been completed but lacked occupants at this time.
Its industrial beige concrete was not to contain me,
though I felt a strong surge from within stating about my inner self:
I am home; I am healed; no longer should I roam.