Legacy Prayers as the Poppy Grows

An obscure Norwegian theologian recently put the idea of legacy prayers to my mind. These are prayers so constructed that they have a power to live and function beyond the life and/or personal contact between the one doing the praying and the one receiving the blessing of the prayer. Legacy prayers he said are like long gentle rains that offer continuous nourishment to a dry earth.

I know that legacy prayers sprang from my grandparents' lips, the fruits of which I continue to receive. Now as I come to see my days as a praying parent roll toward an eventual but definite end, my own legacy prayers come into the spotlight. What shall I pray for my own, and for other dear ones besides my offspring? What shall I pray such that not only temporal things are given the lingering scent of a loving God, but more importantly that eternal things are bathed in His aroma?

While I do not yet have the words for the prayers themselves, I certainly saw the beauty of evidence that they work. It is said in Scripture: For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; Romans 1:20
This day's observations are evidence of this truth.

We took a drive for Mothers' Day
that took us through a town
whose economic collapse
was something sudden
and extreme.

I noticed a common thread
in the landscape there
common to things I've seen
in other such places.

And the thread was spun like this:
tattoo parlors and piercing salons
where crisp barber shops once stood;
liquor stores as frequent
as other towns
--towns with less pain to forget--
might sport the white collar favorite,
Starbucks or
(because there are still children present)
MacDonald's;

What else sits
in that part of town zoned commercial?
The rusty shadows of old retail logos,
long removed from those ghost-town properties;

And in the residential parts
houses--
abandoned or not--
whose first thought-prompt thrown
to a passing viewer says,
"Grant me this dignity:
Imagine my appearance as it was
fifty years ago,
in the days of my glory."
And some viewers will accomodate the request,
and some won't.

These and so many other scenes like them,
these are the signs of land-death
come too sudden and too harsh
to a community.

...But still...
Both everywhere
and nowhere expected
(as these were planned and planted long ago)
the parade of perennials comes forth.

Unperturbed by the rise and fall of an ecomony
they are reborn again and again:
the deep purple iris
the glowing red hollyhock
the aster and the peony
they bud and bloom and dance.

But more than any other right now:
the Bonfire poppy flames.

Though long-days dormant,
(indeed bearing no noticeable foliage
when out of season)
still
like crepe-paper festivals
when the heart most craves a refreshing ornament
--and in those times
when the land lays in startled death
("Is this not the intended season of life?" it cries.)--
Then
then these bold ones bloom and blow,
blow in the winds likewise unchanged
(thought they came and went and came again.)
They dance in the same winds
that blew across the hands that planted them,
many years ago.