‘Prayer beads, what may come’

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Hand of great age – what you find wrapped 
around you in shawl-like cover, in humble endowment;
prayer beads, what may come,
this mustiness of basement galleries,
the art of Dutch colonials loading ships  
no man can remember sailing 
and the bell in the distance is for dinner 
and never church; breaks in wrinkled skin, now weeping –
a pensioner’s sudden chill and you are laid up for days!
What is gallant is gone and it is these many long
silences that remain.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles