Prayer

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important / 
calls for my attention -- the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage / 

I need to buy for the trip. /
Even now I can hardly sit here / 

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside /
already screeching and banging. /

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath. /
Why do I flee from you? /

My days and nights pour through me like complaints /
and become a story I forgot to tell. /

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning /
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence. 

~Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, W.W. Norton & Co.