Wim Coleman is a playwright, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. His poetry has been published in SOL: English Writing in Mexico, The Opiate, Dissenting Voice, Tuck Magazine, and Vita Brevis. His play The Shackles of Liberty was the winner of the 2016 Southern Playwrights Competition. Novels that he has co-authored with his wife, Pat Perrin, include Anna’s World, the Silver Medalist in the 2008 Moonbeam Awards, and The Jamais Vu Papers, a 2011 finalist for the Eric Hoffer/Montaigne Medal. Wim and Pat lived for fourteen years in Mexico, where they adopted their daughter, Monserrat, and created and administered a scholarship program for at-risk students. Wim and Pat now live in Carrboro, North Carolina. They are members of PEN International.

Prayer

Let the pebble learn from the wave
the art of its own shaping.

Let the wave be freed
of its bondage to the tide.

Let the tide know its own power
and yoke itself to my prayer.

Let my prayer take the shape
of an airborne dragonfly.

Let the dragonfly remember
its long-ago flight into stone.

[image: White-faced Darter, Leucorrhinia dubia by Maxime Sacre]