A Prayer for Everyone

A Prayer for Everyone

...we among them.

Many among us hold
a thinly veiled ambition
to become better persons
than those we know
or can point to on a screen.
The bar seems always
set beyond our tiny reach,
just outside of what prayer
and faith can attain.

So let's not make
a list of the innocents.
Soon enough the dead,
and even the unborn,
will also run afoul
of our harsh judgment.
Instead, let's say a prayer
for all of the victims,
we among them,
and for all the victimizers,
we among them.

---

Through our own recovered innocence
we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
~ Henry David Thoreau