My Sentiments as a Prayer

Dear Lord:

You gifted me with words
With words I come before you
With words I bow down
With words I confess my life askew.

When my soul is tormented 
When my spirit is vexed 
When my deepest longings are in disarray
I use words to say I’m much more than just perplexed.

When the wheels of justice grind slow
When the chains of death take my people
When hope is dashed upon the rocks
Sometimes I go to that place beneath the steeple.

I do not all of the time come with words
Sometimes I do not know what to say
With groans understood only by you
Is all I can find to pray.

“I Walked These Days” numbers 365
Blog posts with their words are 59
Prayers in the early morning come to 136
Sometimes they’re prose and sometimes they rhyme.

I’ve sat in many a zoom-like meetings
I’ve written many a first draft letters
My recommendations are even in the Justice Act
Sometimes my words bind me like fetters.

Only you know the focus of many a prayer 
Only you know the many unspoken words
Only you move in ways I do not know
Only you know the burdens our people bear.

Congress sits in places of power
USDA hides behind its doors
Perturb their hearts and shake their bones
And settle the long unanswered scores.

Come into this world I pray
Take off the racist chains
Remove the burdens of dreams deferred
While there is life within our bones.

And so this prayer
Has a lot of words
Beneath are so many groans
That reveal the ache hidden deep within our bones.

Still in You we do trust
Come what may and come what will
Even when you are silent
Even then our hearts will not be still.

Amen