Not an Equation

Before there was our fear, our argument, our need to be forgiven,

I don't pray the way I was taught—on my knees, hands folded, words memorized like a password to heaven.

God of the unfinished answer, meet us before dawn changes anything. Meet the ones whose grief

For soil we did not make, rain we could not schedule, hands that planted before ours:

The water holds no explanation. It receives the child's forehead, the trembling hand,

The Son stands ankle-deep in Jordan water. The Spirit descends—not captured, not owned—a dove's brief shape