Prayer for the World in Seven Couplets by Michael Mintrom

Prayer for the World in Seven Couplets

Start small. Think of someone you love, or someone needing more.

Pray for their day, that they may be restored, inspired, energised.

Pray for creators: Singers, painters, sculptors.

Doesn’t matter who: Whitney Houston, Michelangelo, Henry Moore.

Aren’t those ones dead? Yes, actually, but their work’s not done yet.

Pray for whoever’s in your head.

Now think of children in hard-scrabble places.

Pray they’ll be safe today, loved, and fed. You know the places.

(Like every kid) you’re a vessel of riches, heritage going back so far.

Remember this. Your prayer’s a gift.

Can prayer change stuff, stop famines, bring wars to a close?

You’ll exude peace. It’ll change you. Beyond that, who knows?

So much depends. Pray each day, like the Monk in Battersea Park,

banging his drum and chanting for world peace. Forty years, so far. 

Michael Mintrom is a poet from Aotearoa New Zealand, now living in Melbourne, Australia. His poems have been published in many literary journals. Recent examples can be read in Amsterdam Quarterly, Cordite Poetry Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Prose Poem, Twin Flame Literary, Wasteland Review and a book from Cold Hub Press - Te Purere: The Exodus, The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets.