Poem after a line from Auden

Prayer, like poetry, makes nothing happen,
if "make" means control
and "happen" means an instant, an event.
No incantations with prayer, no spells;
nor with poems. You leave
scratching your head,
ambivalent to what has transpired.
Sometimes forced, sometimes fluid,
never simple, unless void of all
meaning save the surface.
But prayer and poems both deal in depths;
they refuse surface and befuddle the hurried.
And poems, like prayers, work
with more than words,
sometimes in spite of them:
the conversation between words and rhythm,
movement and meaning,
soul and maker,
music in words
that moves hearts with fingerprints
always unseen.