I don’t ask much,

(just everything.)

I ask for peace where now is a puddle of gore and blood on a crowded street.

I ask is for security where now is an empty larder and tears on a child’s cheeks.

I ask for healing and strength where now is plague and an old man grasping an old woman

as they try to out-run bomb blasts.

I ask for a free and earnest conversation where now is riot and repression.

But, most frightening of all,

I ask for Divinity’s Will to be done when I can’t see

what that Will might be

or mean tomorrow or in a century.

For there is an unanticipated blind side to every prayer.

Twain teaches us an army’s victory requires another’s defeat.

A burden lifted-off means a burden hoisted-onto.

An overflowing Thanksgivings feast, since we are able,

means a bowl of thin broth and a crust of stale bread on someone else’s table.

An eminent, desperate need may be met, but, in a thousand years….

Or,

Asking for Gods will be done, without considering how

or the consequences,

requires the bracing of the supplicant.

For that prayer may be answered,

(God Forbid!)

right now!