Jeff Burt’s most recent poem to appear here was Pressing (January 2014).

I Pray for Arms
By Jeff Burt

I pray for arms, Joshua’s bones
to grow where none have been
since birth, fingers long
like claws of trowels
so he could weed and plant,
so he could stir a fire
and climb a neighboring fence.
There is a perfect emptiness
that lives at the end of his shoulders,
a beauty like the sculpted David
that I cannot reach,
an emptiness with nothing missing
that only he and his mother can know
when he hugs her tight.