Prayer for the Long-Lost Invocation

by Caleb Braun


Once said: send me soundly through the sea

Heard the regal ones wore thick robes

Heard the naysayers touched dumbly your wrists

Heard you once appeared through Mom’s mouth

In Colorado woods, dark, all disciples asleep, she said

Release me your image that I might praise you

Heard: this is all your eyes can bear to see

So shadows of Christ on the campgrounds until

The DNA read perfectly its own writing

Inside her: renal tubes unraveled, knew no other

Way laid out before her

Not a lamb not a goat not a son

Strapped on wood take her place

Once said: scared shitless save me

Heard Speaker of the House call

The Navajo Wind Talkers’

Language “the simplest of weapons”

And out came the secret my house built

On a billion weathered words

Once said: here am I, now I am

Each child I tried to hide in obedience to

God America Father purple mountains

Say now nations of the Earth be blessed

God can hear us we are all too loud

Her prayers made no revision

This sword knows no other gesture

Gash the left hip leaving Lord

Cover our eyes with the blood

With the little white lamb blood we can read that

But what of his hand on the stone

Bring the soothsayers Chaldeans astrologers

We have been found wanting

Wanting borders keep at bay the other

Inside us reaching out wanting tongue

Of flame now heard

Hearing voices marks one insane

Blessed be silent that fullness beneath us that sea


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