I walk in woods,
look up into leaf-spangled sky,
pass among new ferns opening their psalm books,
pray with birds’ chants and incantations,
choose my way among rocks and mud.
Early light clings to the side of a tree
like a bird.
Bugs bug me.
Everything belongs.
This is the world I belong to,
the mud I am from.
Before I resist those who would kill it for money,
haul its body off in well paid rail cars,
before I worry,
I belong.
With every breath it becomes me.
With every step it receives me,
holds me in gravity’s love.
With every step we marry.
The great tide of earth’s history
moves through me.
I am the chalice of the universe.
I am one of you,
the body of God.
All of you are the rest of me.
I am yours.
I disappear.
I become the Milky Way.
Now I will get to work.
—June 2, 2017