Where the Imagination Is Apt To Lead

This isn’t about prayer as such,
but concerns the flowers and the barking dog,

common places the imagination might lead.
The coffee shop downtown, where memory

floods the mind in uneven scenes, and no one
prays or even pauses as though he might pray

before drinking in the city’s drivel.
This is a poem about living,

about visions in a world full of dreams,
about rough places, descending into the world’s

basement to see, hear, and smell the vomit,
before drifting off to chase truth. This is about

the Man who sits in the gutter, glad to be with us.
That man never confuses a poem with a prayer.