raccoon prayer
oh Master Of All Who Take And Wash
And Eat lift me away at the end into evening
forever into sanctified crumples of paper
and peelings curled over my hand
i have scavenged as i must
among the hairless
now welcome this bandit into the kingdom
just as you made him
barefoot and faithful and clean
Copyright Credit: Lucille Clifton, “raccoon prayer” from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2008 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions Ltd., boaeditions.org.
Source: The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions Ltd., 2008)