<><><>without a prayer<><><>

I should say: Without a prayer flag.

I sit by the back window surveying the fresh snow (which my wife Denise shoveled per her custom), and I noticed that the Tibetan prayer flag that hangs suspended from the diagonal walking stick that is C-clamped to the yard light has blown down. Yesterday it was hanging from one piton; today it's buried in the snow, one presumes.

In the Himalayan way, a prayer flag blows and blows in the winds until it is unraveled, thread-by-thread, dissipating its written prayers for the welfare of all into the mountain cosmos, and beyond. Thus they are delivered. I wonder if it counts that our prayer flag just blew down after months of trying its best to plain unravel. Is this a prayerus interruptus?

Beyond the back fence, the neighbor's red white and blue bunting still hangs from his front door, but behind his storm door. I think our sewer raccoonous prayers, though blown down temporarily, are perhaps more likely to be delivered than his.