"I Will Pray For You"

It must surely have been so very
difficult for her to adjust to life in
this northern-latitude Western country,
so at variance with her birthplace, her
origins with its tribal influences, ancient
culture, civil unrest, poverty and violence.
She doubtless lives in relative poverty
here, too, but she is well fed, and clothed
and housed and a pensive smiles lingers
always on her proud old, dark lips; her
eyes alive with a zest for life and an
interest in all that surrounds her.

Where am I from? she asked, years ago,
already wise to the Canadian reality, built
upon the steady historic migration of
restive, downtrodden and uprooted people
to these vast and prosperous shores
promising a future of freedom and
opportunities to those seeking refuge and
personal advantage. This woman, once
deformed by hunger and deprivation, has
adapted happily. She attends her church
regularly for, she has informed me, when she
had nothing else, she had hope, in her faith.

She travels long, wearying distances on
crowded city buses to her work at this
suburban Salvation Army thrift shop,
through seasonal weather conditions unknown
in sub-Saharan Africa. She endures what we
all do, and more, much more. But she remains
sincerely invested in concern for others; for
example, me, and my loved ones. She asks
always, solicitously, of my familial concerns.

"I will pray for you", she tells me tenderly,
beaming her incomparably beneficent smile,
even as she knows my roots, so unlike her own,
and that her belief in the divine is not in the
remotest shared, my good friend, by me.