The Invitation

Slowly unbutton these pewter discs sewn to your shirt,

tear off your tattered tunic of fatigue and regret and step out

from these closeted depressions and longings into soft light,

out of petrified habits of waiting and wanting hid underneath stones

and lift each shy foot like a homeward-bound tune, start that green

dancing across fields of daffodil and rye, rest in the shade of great oaks

on hillslopes bisected by streams where dragonflies burst like sparklers in July,

where a family of buffalo feast on tufted sweet grasses, these burly brown

soothsayers shrouded in wool-shag back from manifest destiny at cliff’s edge,

hear them whisper at dusk into your thirsting ears, tales told of your one true nature,

your love of baseball, rivers that wander, music and fir trees, rainclouds of change,

maps of far places, your messy redemptions, circular pondering, these sudden

endings like earthquakes and eventual resurrections, friends you love who give

unearned exemptions, your trembling with joy and from half-buried shame,

now fully clothed in these hoofprints and heartbeats of our holy animal ways.