by Julia Griffin

“The 17-month-old girl who was shot [in Odessa, TX] was identified by family friends as Anderson Davis. … Anderson’s mother … said her daughter’s vital signs were good and that she had shrapnel in her chest, her front teeth had been knocked out, and she had a hole through her bottom lip and tongue. But Anderson was alive, she wrote, which was ‘a prayer answered bigger than I’ve ever had to pray.'”
—The New York Times

“Gun laws were loosened in Texas the day after the state’s second mass shooting in a month.”
—Vox

What news of baby Anderson? It isn’t of the best:
She’s bullets through her lip and tongue and shrapnel in her chest;
But hear her mother speak of it—the words she finds to say:
A prayer answered bigger than I’ve ever had to pray.

The standard type of monster made the usual rampage:
He murdered seven people, of a lengthy range of age,
But Anderson survived it, and her mother blessed the day:
A prayer answered bigger than I’ve ever had to pray.

The Lord is unpredictable—on that we can agree
But anyone can well predict what Texas law will be,
And no one’s counting blessings like the godly NRA:
A prayer answered, bigger than I’ve ever had to pray.