A Journey PrayerAuthor(s): John KinsellaSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Fall, 2004), pp. 45-46Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20151841 .

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JOHN KINSELLA

A Journey Prayer

for Tracy

I pray for a lowering of toxicity levels

and ebullient sunsets without other agendas; I pray for rain during drought, and heat

when I'm cold?I pray that it works

like this for you as well, but I pray

equally against paternalism; I pray for the colours of the ring-necked parrot, that they might continue as bright; I pray that I will always love my partner as I love her now, that we won't grow apart,

caught unawares on opposite sides of the world; I pray the ice of the polar regions retains its solidity; I pray that my brother continues to make unique art and music and doesn't get crushed by the headlines; I pray that my daughter manages her evenings

without the changing light undoing her day; I pray that baby Timothy retains his ability to laugh at the slightest difference in our appearances? there's a lot to be laughed over as time rolls on;

I pray that my estranged elder son knows

that I pray for him, despite the distance

that has no name, that I read in the sharp and industrious

flight of the wood swallow; I pray my mother's broken shoulder heals

with the precision but originality of a Rodin sculpture, and I pray that she excuses my indulgence in this prayer; I pray that somebody appreciates the wisdom

of John's olive trees out near Quairading, out on the edge of the salt-lands, out where neighbours' kids

thrash the unlicensed wreck

along all firebreaks, as if they're a super highway

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of communal ownership and creative abandon?

and I pray for their safety doing burn-outs,

kicking up the salty dust... I pray they miss fence-posts and don't roll it on the corners;

I pray I don't stop enjoying reading the work of others, even after my own voice has become jaded or faded

from excess?I pray I read a new poet most days, and remember all poets I've read

every day; I pray sound and colour remain inseparable; I pray when the lion lies down with the lamb

it's a new beginning and not an end; I pray for reconciliation?the land to get its old names back,

with all signs being bilingual, at least?I always think of Ireland when praying for this,

though that's an abstraction of sorts;

I pray for dead friends and all those I've never known

who are dead or want to be dead or are at risk of dying? I pray for health and the preservation of forests; I pray for cross-dressers and same-sex lovers,

I pray for heterosexual lovers as well; I pray for brush-tail possums, quolls, sugar gliders, mulga parrots,

elegant parrots, galahs, and mosquitoes as representatives of all creatures, including humans; I pray that the neighbours not only don't spray over our fence but that they abandon spray

altogether; I pray not to be so wilful and judgemental, not to seek to use the power of prayer to push my own barrow,

and I pray to say thanks for those lines of Walt Whitman's:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself," and that I learn to deny them as often as I claim empathy, and I pray from the fringes of sleep that you travel well, wherever it is you travel.

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