Delmarva Review: Would It Change a Thing by Sylvia Karman

Author’s note: This poem grew out of conversations about the concept of time—entirely a human construction—and how mindfulness can help whoever and whatever we bring to our hearts and minds. Later this narrative came to me, asking what molecule of someone’s life then and our life now might be altered by prayer or meditation.

Would It Change a Thing

praying for someone past? Because God, a crone begging
coins tells her, has no need for time.

Imagine a kindness tossed behind us, stirring up winter’s
leaves the year that spring stalled and fieldstone
caught the jaws of her father’s plow.

Let it summon one gritty pause in his day of churning
rock from soil and furrows for seeds, debts creasing
his brow. Redeem him

and the burden of burlap tales trailing her still
with their upturned faces, hungry for chaste
morsels of regret.

Pray the sun through those spring shy limbs,
let moss and mud grin up between her toes.

What if some far future soul is praying for us now?

⎯

Maryland author Sylvia Karman tells us she hikes whenever and wherever possible. “Like the loons,” she and her husband return every spring to the Adirondacks to hike and kayak until mid-autumn. Retired from a career in public policy, she is completing her first novel. Her poems in the twelfth edition of Delmarva Review are her first poems in publication. She lives in Ellicott City.

Delmarva Review welcomes the best new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writing from all authors, based on competitive selection. The submission period opens from November 1 until March 31 for the 14th annual edition. See the website for more information and for submissions. Designed to encourage outstanding writing, the literary journal is nonprofit, independent, and supported in part by a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.