Prayer for our Troops: National Poetry Month

Prayer for Our Troops

With the setting of a hostile sun
most of us will never see,
when you might welcome dreams
if you could safely drift away,

Know your perils slip into our prayers
like footsteps behind us on a lonely street.
We may not bring our palms together;
we may pray from our kitchen or our car.

But even if we do not know your name,
in your darkest corridor we wrap
our prayers around you, like armor
shielding you with grace.
--Kay B. Day
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This poem was first published at The Tank, National Review Online, in a post by W. Thomas Smith, Jr., April 6, 2007. Smith, a distinguished journalist and author, had traveled to Iraq to cover the war for a number of media, and since he's a friend, I was pretty concerned about him. He's inspired poetry before and I'm sure he will again. You can read some of Smith's words about the war in an article published at National Review and CBS News, The Emotional Roller Coaster of Combat.