I’m not really into the whole poetry scene, but a certain style of it I do like, and this one touched me so I wanted to pass it along.

Prayer
beginning with four lines
from Taha Muhammad Ali

If, over this world, there’s a ruler
who holds in his hand bestowal and seizure,

I turn in prayer, asking him
to decree for the hour of my demise

that it be a morning on Lake Keowee,
in early spring when the bloodroot

and yellow violet are in bloom in the woods
beyond us, a ghost of fog moving slowly,

almost imperceptibly, across the grey water.

And I ask that it be after a long trip,
after I have seen my grandmother, my brother,

after I have looked upon the face of a niece
I’ve never seen, after I have said to my father

what I need to say to my father, whatever
that may be then, and on the morning on the lake,

may I be on the dock with my beloved,
tossing bits of biscuit to the fish, rising

from the green depths like memories–and
across the lake the sound of two geese

calling to one another.

Ed Madden