"Field."
"It has sealed its windows and removed its signs.
Religion has shut its doors without further notice.
Prayers from around the world have
breathed their last breath.
Some have asserted disbelief in the believers.
Others have conceded this belief in themselves.
Many have complained of mismanagement and abuse.
Almost all have planned centuries of exhaustion.
Prayers in every language have severed their every tie.
They want to go home.
They wish to return to their places of birth and gestation.
They, too, wish to sing the story of their survival.
Yet, not a pair of hands that held
a prayer could be recalled, or a solitary voice that passed
through a prayer identified.
Not a birth or a death could be summoned.
And so the prayers have detached themselves
from their bindings and their books.
They have let the wind dictate their fate,
and they have withered like November leaves.
But not all.
Some have remained, landing on the heads
of angry worshippers, whose fury at the prayers
could hardly be contained.
And these prayers have burrowed themselves
into each of their temples.
They have morphed into appendages weighing down
their bodies.
And now, there is no extracting of the prayers
from the minds of the angry, nor is there any remedy
for the myriad of infections developing and spreading
from one believer to the next.
And so the faithful have been herded into houses
of worship long abandoned.
And under one roof, angry worshippers of all faiths
sighed their last sigh.
And under one roof, prayers that have
parted with their every word to the rain, and the snow,
and the daily habits of man now touch the wordless.
One body brushing up against the other,
waiting for a pair of hands to hold it, a voice to claim it."