Occasional Impressions

The Gemini Poets

Praying (1)

God
Is the name
The fingers of the drowning mind
Reach at, cling to, and
Burn themselves upon.

Praying (2)

I in moving darkness want
To push hands through the black clay
plastered on my eyes,
And knead it to what can be seen or
Understood. I
Torture knowing into words
Along the prism of my mind to shape
The night I stand in.

My words are nets
Let down
To catch
The sea.

Praying (3)

I, on waste strange water’s shore
In pale light wearying my eyes,
My face in grass or sand, I
Press my ear against the mind’s shell
Lying near, straining to catch the strange
Distant sea. Why
Do not the falling waves on this frail shell
Grind it to sand or water, crushing
And breaking it to
Itself?

Oh God the waters are not strange.
It is the shell I do not know.
rdw - jan 1971

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