Prayers and Premontions

In the 2000 my mother, Lois W. Cloyd, wrote a poem entitled “A Prayer for the Millennium”. The poem was published in a collection of poems entitled American at the Millennium: The Best Poems and Poets of the 20^th Century. I had forgotten about the poem until I came across the book this evening. Given the events that have transpired since these words were penned the poem feels like more of an antithetical premonition than a prayer. It leaves an eerie feeling in my soul.

 

No more children with nowhere to sleep,
No more children with no one to weep
When they wander alone and cold on the street.
America at the Millennium.

No more children afraid to go to school
Because someone, somewhere, broke the rule
With guns, causing violence, innocent blood.
America at the Millennium.

No more churches with pious airs,

More and more churches with members who care
What happens to people in their everyday world.
America at the Millennium.

 More and more Christians showing God’s love

And telling the world that Jesus came from above
To forgive us our sins and fit us for Heaven.
America at the Millennium.