The letter E descends from the Semitic heh, which in its various forms looks like a person at prayer, standing, sitting, or walking, his arms raised heavenward, and which sounds like the natural sound of breath. On its way to E, the old letter lost its legs and torso, plastic doll that was played with roughly and dropped in the yard and chewed by the dog or some devourer, and then the old letter got turned on its side, donkey cart tipped over by a snarl of wind. All my prayers are like that, and my favorite mountains, my loves, smashed up, shedding pieces that had been vital, snapping off, curling like a blighted leaf, frog shrinking back to tadpole, puddle dwindling to cracked earth. Maybe all my prayers could also be dry twigs that a campfire turns into a little light and warmth, or cracker-crumbs from the bottom of a purse that a body feeds on. Jessie van Eerden writes about a kind of prayer as becoming whole even as you tatter and tatter. The kind of prayer that is a brittle bread, but at least it’s real bread. The letter E calls me to breath-prayers, mercy-on-me, brittle bread prayers, Adam and Eve prayers. The letter E puts around my shoulders a shawl that comforts as it’s rubbing bare, shows me a mushroom-adorned branch rotting and nourishing the ground after the trees of Eden have been clear-cut or napalmed or cratered. It’s the kind of branch Bessie Harvey picks up after she hears the trees praying, an old sycamore giving thanks slowly and quietly, a shagbark hickory praising God. She lives near the smelter, breathes its fumes, sees the ragged clouds that get stuck over it, never drift away. She says that when we bear good fruit, we are building a place for the Paradise to return. She picks up branches that are beetled and splintery and jagged, branches that she peels the bark from and sands and paints and makes into little people, branch people, they are freedom, she goes into them and talks to God. She’s making Eve and the Serpent. She’s making branch people who twist their torsos, scowl, stare at her, reach their arms overhead, as if to pull the misshapen clouds down to their misshapen bodies like coats of skin. She considers an unfinished branch, opens her cabinet, reaches for glitter, for foil, for black paint.
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William Woolfitt is the author of three poetry collections: Beauty Strip (Texas Review Press, 2014), Charles of the Desert (Paraclete Press, 2016), and Spring Up Everlasting (Mercer University Press, 2020).