15.1 Spring/Summer 2017

Michael Bazzett Prayer

 

Drive the old road and you’ll pass a tractor,
nose blunt in the wind, slowly eaten by rust.

Let us wonder who abandoned that hulk,
the engine still ticking hot where it quit.

What ox was ever wise enough to simply
lower his head as the furrow grew closed?

May we all be blessed to turn to stone
and feel the rain heal the earth behind us.


Michael Bazzett is a 2017 NEA Fellow and the author of three books of poems: You Must Remember This, (Milkweed, 2014), Our Lands Are Not So Different, (Horsethief, 2017) and The Interrogation, (Milkweed, 2017).

 

*Read Dick Allen’s response to “Prayer” in our Contributors’ Marginalia series.