State Worker Catches Himself in a Lie, Then Realizes Truth is Far More Interesting

It seems I've always been the praying sort,
If prayer is weeping along with FM songs
Upon the lonely road. That human heart
Will break in slow 4/4; the rights, the wrongs

Of childish lyrics; mélange of minor chords.
And all those setting suns I've spoken to
Intoning grace. Amen. Muttered words
That disappeared like smoke into the blue.

And birds, blossoms, breaking waves don't know
They're holy, perfect relics of a heaven
Existing only here, only now.
Just thank that winter moon, that summer sun.

Just thank those family photos on the shelf.
Just thank the stuff of stars you call yourself.

Harold Whit Williams is a prize-winning poet and longtime guitarist for the indie rock band Cotton Mather. He is the recipient of the 2020 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, and the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. The author of five books of poetry, Williams lives in Austin, Texas where he records lo-fi music as Daily Worker and catalogs the KUT Collection for the University of Texas Libraries. A Rain Ancestral is his sixth book of poems, but the first released by San Antonio Review Press.

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