Prayer in Bad Weather

O Giver of flies

 

Maker of mosquito with

hypodermic proboscis

Creator of slugs

 

You made this day dank

with clouds, the short circuitry

of lightning, the grumble of thunder

 

So that tomorrow will hatch out new and amazing

insects, reptilian frogs and flowers

flowers flowers

 

I thank you for my morsel

that you did not give to a maggot

for my crumb that did not crumble

 

O holy Other-Than-Me

your world is wet with rain that

my world might blossom

 

Leaf spore

Fungal apparition

Secret bud

 

Bless me.

 

—Mary Fell  (Wayne County)

This poem originally appeared in Sycamore Review 7.2 (Summer 1995):10.

Mary Fell, a native New Englander, has lived in Indiana since 1981.  She is Professor Emerita at Indiana University East in Richmond, where she lives and continues to write.

Indiana Humanities is posting a poem a day from Indiana poets in celebration of National Poetry Month.