Prayer with Miscarriage / Grant Us the Ruined Grounds

Dear Boy: It is true: You took two tries
to get here—for your mother and me
to calyx together a body bold
enough to carry the grace of you. Amen.
So forgive us if we still bow inside
the garden of your miscarried becoming—:

grant us the ruined grounds of the first prayer
fiercer than our cleaved breathing. How could we
rush to rinse the word loss from our de-parented mouths?
Remember this: we surrendered a new name
for everything to the tender hour at our chest.
Nothing blooms in the old field of maybe. No sound

flowers above please. But we endure what’s not delivered
from the impressions planted by our knees. Amen.

From The Night Angler. Copyright © 2018 by Geffrey Davis. Used with the permission of BOA Editions.