Prayer to Man by Cory Marshall Spangler

                         Jarrett CC


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Prayer to Man 


the dust groans like day-old snow packed by boots,
the same desert roads
each day, in the hour
between the evening
and the dusk. in every one of the sunsets:
it starts in my arms and my teeth.
I feel how I did during fevers as a boy,
when I could touch things that were not there
with my body,
as if all of it was me, being
played with by drastic hands.
the earth slips. skies change purple.
without a thought
my body grasps
the immensity of how small,
the smallest bone in it, is.
and on my shadow on every rock
in the fading light, I read
the ABCs of my insignificance.
what small frame and small head does this?
bending like a torn black ribbon of rubber
there over the fossilized ammonite shells.
I am not fighting fit at all,
for any fight but a fighting, fighting
for grace for death,
which is to suffer, to suffer
cosmically. dear man,
unless you be a god or better,
then be as the sun.
go down beyond me,
arms turning to sand,
​gradually in the dark.

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Cory Marshall Spangler is an American author and photographer.  His work has been published in AGITATE: Film Photo Broadsheet.  He publishes his own handmade periodicals of experimental documentary photography and narrative: Native Stranger Periodical.  He and his wife live sheltered in place in the West Texas desert.