Ann Keiffer

Will You Pray With Me?

Will you pray with me…
for regions where factories and mines shut down,
no jobs, nothing left but cobwebs and ghosts?

Will you pray with me…
for refugees so desperate to flee from violence, war and
privation, they escape on heaving seas in ragged boats?

Will you pray with me…
for cities, cultures and countries turned into hellscapes,
broken down, bombed back to stone-age dust?

Will you pray with me…
for the guy in camo who prizes his guns, his tramps in
all seasons, his hunts deep in the green-brown woods?

Will you pray with me…
for the old man who must limp to the well for water,
making himself, every time, a target for snipers?

Will you pray with me…
for the single mom whose check won’t stretch,
leaving her to choose: food, medicine or rent?

Will you pray with me…
for the strong black man, hands up, shot down by
cops in one chaotic, immutable moment?

Will you pray with me…
for the cop called out to one ugly, dangerous, bloody
crisis after another…who gets murdered for her trouble.

Will you pray with me…
for companies that invent new worlds and change
fortunes, but hide their billions offshore?

Will you pray with me…
for leaders and politicians of every country, especially
the ones by whom you, I, we or they are appalled?

Will you pray with me…
for fundamentalists, progressives, conservatives, liberals,
agnostics, atheists…whose beliefs we believe to be wrong?

Will you pray with me…
for haters who hate based on race, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, politics, values, country or class?

Will you pray with me…
for haters who hate the haters for believing what the
haters have taken a lifetime of learning to believe?