Prayer to Outpace Envy – a poem by Judith Sornberger

Prayer to Outpace Envy

After viewing a photo of a friend’s new, resort-style pool 
when I can’t afford to get my peeling house painted.


Envy stalks me as I stride
beside the marsh on a morning
when mud and bursting green 
smell like the ooze of Heaven, 
when air sings with the bright screech 
of redwing blackbirds and swoops 
with the wings of the first swallows.

Even when I feel Envy gaining on me,
I have to pause for two swimming 
Vs beneath dark water—
one muskrat following another 
onto an island, watch as they shake 
water from their fur and groom  
themselves with those clever claws.

And how did I not notice
the parade of painted turtles
lined up on fallen logs?
Some slide into the water
as more heave themselves up,
shells gleaming like blessings.

Judith Sornberger is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art (Shanti Arts). Her seven chapbooks include the prize-winning Wal-Mart Orchid (Evening Street Press). She is also a prize-winning journalist, a playwright, and an essayist. Her memoir The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany is from Shanti Arts. A professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, Sornberger lives on the side of a mountain outside Wellsboro, PA.