Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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One by one
each brick falls.
No mason now
can fix the wall.

Here comes
another cannonball.
Nowhere now
for him to go.

A prayer can’t hurt,
he tells himself,
if someone’s
on the other side.

For years his friends
have said that’s so.
What if they’re right?
Too soon he’ll know.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.