Winding Inward: Prayer

         -after the image by Paola Corso

If you are to move at all, 
stay still, 
allow nothing 
but breath
to step down 
and around the self,

syllables that don’t 
need connections to words
descending spirals 
of stairs on their own 
accord. If you are to speak 

at all,
let voice cascade
toward empty stairwells
where no echo dwells.

Let thought whirl in on itself
till it whispers God

as final landing.

Majorie Maddox is the host for Poetry Moment for WPSU-FM, assistant editor of Presence, and Professor Emerita at Commonwealth University. Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry—most recently Hover Here, Seeing Things, and Small Earthly Space—as well as a story collection, 5 children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry (co-editor). Her middle-grade biography is A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball’s Great Experiment. www.marjoriemaddox.com