Who does not marvel at the spider’s creative saliva,

the ant’s perfection,

the butterfly’s unsettled elegance,

that the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven?

You Birds of the Air,
Hawk, Sparrow, and laughing Jay
You embody freedom itself,
delight us with your song, astound us with feats of migration
Grant us your perspective,
for too often our horizon is limited
and we are blind to the full results of our actions.

In days of old, animals believed

humans to likewise have a soul

Children mostly still think this way today.

She’s stopped to shop for groceries.

Her snow boots sloshing

Each time we gather for worship a new body is created. Never before has quite this same congregation come together, and never again.

Gather up whatever is 
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled 
in the waves or fallen 
in flames out of the sky

There was a time when my aggravation with the system focused on Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense.

Come into this moment

as if stepping into a garden at dawn,

quiet, tender, open to what may grow.

Be what they do not want:
Be thoughtful.

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
            Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I want to write poems for construction workers and dreamers
For revolutionaries

The … doctrine

of the communion of saints

is simple, really.

Bless Tuesday, blessed Monday.

Bless the word week, its seven

small days trail with y.