PRAYER TO NONE

My tenth summer I became a devil:
throwing stones at passing planes,
damming up the chuckling brooks

and better still, hauling
up rocks to wreck the teeth
of the farmer's big red combine.

I made no apologies.
In a town with nothing to do,
this was really something.

I made like a louse through the wheat
stalked by god's one long finger,
laying low as the sun clocked its weathervane.

yellow days spent hefting chalky blocks
into that rich rasping sea, watching

my charges sink hidden beneath.

I remember my face was tight
and serious, full of importance.
my shorts had frayed,

my wet white tee crumpled
a dusty carmine, slapping
against my back like a cape.

god, every part of me itched,
itched all through my labour
but the devil take me if I scratched.

as the breeze brushed the field,
the field whispered
comb my thatches

smooth my head
and each hair
a stalk shall be

I was having none of it.
Nature spoke like a tick
embedded in my scalp.

the summer waned, we were gifted
a floppy-eared rabbit. I lost interest 

in my assignment, forgot to listen out

for the fireball, the scream
of a machine ground down
to utter purposelessness.

Then, that night before school,
the bed was a sackcloth
braided into my wet skin.

my stomach turned
like a rat
on a spit

in the silence, I squeezed
my eyes shut saying, lord,
don't let me succeed

squirming against the light

the silence deafening as after

any rupture or explosion