This, then is how I want
to pray things well:

for days of long evening
shadow on bright dewgrass;
or the metallic clatter of geese.

To pray things well is
the difference between
an enclosure
and an embrace,
or whether flesh
yields before stone.

This, then, is why the hawks –
all five of them –
wing the holy heights
while pale-beaked starlings
change like clothing
on the branching cedar.

Like a “little owl of the
waste places”, I want
to pray things well:

the window moth trapped
as a remnant of smoke;
the vulture, indifferent,
clinging to a withered
stalk out of dark water;
the hidden ferns
murmuring in secret.

I will open my hands now.
I want to know what happens
after the cryptic stars
have fallen to concrete
and are thrown aside
beneath the leaves.

(Written at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit with inspiration/words from Psalm 102)