Man of Faith The world at my back, I lie prone in a field in the only spot trees refuse to block from view. Blades of grass lean toward my body to hold me in place. Then I focus on the firmament, all those gradients of blue from edge to edge. Clouds drift diagonally, bright bodies clinging to their shadows. I start to feel the bonds of gravity snap loose, my stomach floating free, then my head, dizzy, a bubble drawn into the emptiness before me. This is the feeling of falling up, the rapture of the body pulled to the heavens. I used to be a boy in the wilderness, always looking skyward. Now I am a man of faith who closes his eyes to come back down to earth, which carries all my sorrow through the vastness of space.
David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing). His second collection will be published by Fernwood Press. His work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Prairie Schooner, Psaltery & Lyre, The Meadow, Cutleaf, Sheila-Na-Gig, etc. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College.
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