God and the Wheel

The rainbow wheel spinning
I curse at waiting for the folder to open
looks exactly like it feels
when I’m trying to finish one quick thing
and my husband is calling me to dinner.

If you’re spinning the wheel God
I should not be cursing
at the revelation appearing on my screen
praising the colors throwing off light

a personal prayer wheel
chanting Om mane padme hum
every time it appears
heralding what’s in the machine

yesterday’s thoughts with a stroke
resurface where and how I left them
when my husband called me to dinner

fresh from some server farm
out west somewhere
within strings of zeros and ones
the wheel spinning.

Alison Hicks’ forthcoming book of poems, Knowing Is a Branching Trail, won the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Books, and was released in September, 2021. Previous books include poetry collections You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, a novella Love: A Story of Images, and an anthology, Prompted. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.