This poem was recently featured in The New York Times Magazine. It was exactly the poem I needed to read at that moment, and I’ve been carrying it with me ever since.

“The Word That Is A Prayer”
by Ellery Akers

One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he’s saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don’t go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God like the feather it is,

Read the rest of the poem here.

Please be sure to visit Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference for the Poetry Friday Round Up.