A Prayer

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.


As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling
An endless panorama of things—
Quick steps of gay-voiced children,
Adolescence in its wondering silences,
Maid and man on moonlit summer’s eve,
Women in the holy glow of Motherhood,
Old men gazing silently thru the twilight
Into the beyond.
O God, give me words to make my dream-children live.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 29, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.