A Writer’s Prayer Poem by Tarun Cherian

Let my words have an unvarnished feel to them. Truth writ in the grain. Sentences that feel like bark and offer comfort like a bench after a long walk into the hills with a woman.

Let my words have the clearness of a stream - the seeing pebbles look. The kind through which you reach and pick a water smooth pebble. Or better still cupped in both hands, its icy coolness splashed on a sweaty face and arms dewed with a laughing run up a summery slope.

Let my words have a good taste to them, like warm stew ladled with loving arms, brown-gold as loaves snoring-soft in a basket weaved hither-thither with sentences and bible rhythms and the warm taste of grace.

Let my words smell like the tenderness of a woman's breast or a cupped hand raised gently, its fleshy plumpness to nostrils trembling as a race horse's might. Or let the words breathe of iron-hot clothes, or a leather saddle, or a table being waxed by the arms of the carpenter.

Let my words sound like a lullaby, rocking my child in its syllables rippling like gentle waves in an ocean with no shores.