Afraid to Pray

Dear God I’m afraid if I pray for my daughter’s safety you’ll blithely
allow her to get raped or abducted or crash on a highway
on a perfect summer day. Forget I mentioned my daughter. What daughter?

I remember how Anne Frank believed in the goodness of mankind.
I wonder how she felt the moment her diary was knocked from her hands
because that’s how I’m feeling these days: like Job with post-traumatic

stress disorder. Don’t worry, God, I know you exist; but, I’m having some
serious trust issues. Maybe it began with that nightmare about my
mother shoving my grandmother into a swift-running river.

I jumped in to save her, and I saved her all right, but O the branches
and Kentucky mud stuck in our hair and mouths—the disbelief
in her eyes—and me having to tell her the truth.

Dear God if you made us in your likeness because you were
lonely then uh-oh. I’m so tired of Nazis marching to the rhythm of my prayers.
I prayed that the love of my life would survive his cancer then he died on my birthday.

And for thirty years I prayed my ex-husband would survive his insanity, but he
finally blew his brains out. I know there’s a heaven because
I walked along a tightrope of Atlantic foam after Joel died and

a rainbow lassoed the sun. The sky was timorous and thin
as an ear drum and I knew if I pushed with all of my rage
that the sky would burst and we would touch hands one last time.

I’m so tired of praying and getting punched in the gut. I prayed that
my parents would not sell my sister’s black Morgan horse with the star
on its forehead, but they sold it all right and now she’s afraid to love her own children.

I prayed that my parents would not sell the hand-built log cabin on the Indian
reservation, but when they knew they could die without selling it, they sold it
all right and the new owners bulldozed it down along with everything in it

including a Bible my mother had placed just so. And they chopped down the forest
and threw my canoe in a dumpster. Now all I do is scour real estate ads for log cabins
on the Indian reservation. I’ve found a few places but they’re just not the same. Still,

I’d like to move back to the northwoods and live in a cabin and pray to the lake
and the woods and the wolves. Like God the wolves would not answer my prayers,
but unlike God, by God they would listen for once and look me straight in the eye.