Prayer

Philip Metres

Wither me to within me:
Welt me to weal me common again:
Withdraw to wear me weary:
Over me to hover and lover again:

Before me to form and perform me:
Round me to rill me liquid incisions:
Behind me to hunt and haunt me:
Down me to drown indecision:

Bury me to seed me: bloom me
In loam me: grind me to meal me
Knead me to rise: raise me to your mouth

Rive me to river me:
End me to unmend me:
Rend me to render me:

About This Poem

“During a struggle of chronic pain years ago, I began searching restlessly for prayers that might reach past my own resistance to prayers I’d inherited in my own faith tradition, and to write my own—often through the rhetoric or language of other prayers. This poem is born from an old prayer by Lancelot Andrewes, and plays with the paradox embedded in prayers of petition—that we are trying to reach outside of ourselves, but for something of ourselves.”
—Philip Metres

Philip Metres is the author of Sand Opera (Alice James Books, 2015). He is professor of English at John Carroll University and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Photo credit: Robert Muller

Most Recent Book by Metres

Sand Opera

(Alice James Books, 2015)

"Slowly in Prayer" by Matthew Lippman

"Disciplines [If there is prayer, there is a mother kneeling]" by Dawn Lundy Martin

"Prayer to Shadows on My Wall" by Mark McMorris

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May 22, 2015