pray

now comes my father
prostrate in his
own garden
ebullient and free:
he readies his solomon's temple
and God enters in
a slow descent

green goes the tightened
apertures
dilating
the corrugated irises of
the closed mind
and i leave and
arrive

he seeks - my father -
to burrow down into
the valley toward
tranquility
peace is peace
no doing
no meaning

pitch from the canopy
of pine floats down
upon me;
the grace of a
garden with her
black-eyed susans
and asters and
chrysanthemums are
languid in a thoughtful
breeze

my father approaches
God on a bed of whispers

i lay
in deference
my face inches from
the grass:
blades are congregations in
tufts among
pebbles and twigs
tossed from tree-towers
and they all are epicentric to
my vision, no
landscape no horizon

my father's face
is in the face of
his Lord's
lips to lips
giving and receiving
something approaching
a haloed kiss

the good center
is a shallow pool reflecting
what i know
and in the vein a stream
toward an island
filled with knowledge
- winged horses and
laughing birds

my father delves
- no plea -
a pressing of palms;
a passage over
and through so that He
receives what my father
is, not what he wants

the earth is on hold
this mistress of humans
and the birth-mother of her
inhabitors calls me
to conjoin
and blades become
stones become
twigs become
me

my father
in prayer
is an abundance of
joy and a weeping
willow in a field of barley
his words are for him
and Him alone and i am listener
pulled into the orbit
of my father's blessings

amen