Daybreak Prayer on Edisto Island

Melissa LaCross

Page xi →I want to free myself entirely

like the Pacific breeze

that blew across country

a whole week straight

then circled and fell

before stilling itself

on this Carolina beach,

like the brown pelican that,

faced with wild gusts,

both soars into wind

and dives headlong,

oracle of survival.

In the resurrected heart,

which fears nothing,

the world has already died,

disappeared in rotation

then returned at dawn:

new sun, new dew

across wild oats,

even our watches

forget when to wake.

I want the dew.

I want to rise early,

lay among wise dunes,

see it form on my thigh.

I want to weep

when it evaporates.

I want the shore

with driftwood

Page xii →trees, where a beached

whale found rest,

blue clay and sand

a charitable bed

to give itself back,

and I want

the white jaw bone

and baleen to come alive,

show me how to fish

in ravenous tides,

to plunge deep in darkness

and come up fed.

Melissa LaCross has a master of fine arts in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was born and raised in Florence, SC, and attended Francis Marion University. She has a master of arts in English from Clemson University. You can find her on Instagram or wandering trails with her husband, dog, and kids in tow.