The Father, the Son

My father prays the way children say the pledge of allegiance,

The same rote script repeated over and over each Sunday meal

As if checking in, once again, to a dead radio through which

Not even static crackles, and life never changes: still, there are the sick

Who are unhealed, the travelers who don’t make it home in safety,

And even the occasional meal that, though blessed, will roil

In the gut at two a.m. and turn us into desperate believers, pressing our thumb

To the two-way radio mouthing a dumb Please, bloated with meaning.

So different, those Sunday prayers, from his weekday prayers,

Which are delivered in that tongue most familiar to God,

Those sighs, which translate, roughly, to

Father, help me get through it,

This life,

Which we’re told is a gift.