My friend Elton is driving, meaning hard and fast,
his Harley down Interstate 20 from Abilene, Texas,
to Cook Children Medical Center in Fort Worth
where his fourteen-year-old daughter

lies sustained by machines encouraging
her lungs to pump oxygen on its route
through her body; timing the downbeat
of her heart, a jazz rhythm improvisation;

wishing her kidneys well, another day
holding steady like Elton wrestling
the Harley through the stinging rain,
cross winds slamming him closer

to the center stripe, then the ditch
dropping to his right, his vision blurred
by more than the rain–love I can say
for this resurrected motorcycle biker

grateful, yes, for his wife all hours faithful
beside her daughter, a mother’s prayer
no need to be spoken for God and Jesus
and Elton to hear loud over the throbbing

engine, a constant accompaniment
to the silent pleas, please, of friends gathered
at City Light Community Ministries, Abilene,
church members and friends from the streets

lifting their hands, palms raised in blessing,
certain God’s Holy Spirit will do what will be
done for Madison, for her mother Shaina,
for Elton bearing down on the highway

between City Light and Cook’s, professing
Saint Francis’s “practical Christianity . . .
lived in the streets of the world”¹—
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Elton’s prayer of forgiveness
lifted on the wind stream rising
behind the heaven-bent Harley,
his gratitude no matter the outcome.

¹ Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, On Line, Week Forty: Franciscan Witness and Practice, Monday, September 29, 2025, “Franciscan Alternative Orthodoxy.” https://cac.org/daily-meditations/franciscan-alternative-orthodoxy/