KING OF SKY-SEA

earth's prayer

earth's prayer

The fecund earth
beckons us
forever with
blackberry

bushes and
wild raving
birdsong,

welcomes all
here together
in such a fertile
glistening,

asks again
and ever
again

(because we do
not yet know
how to listen):

please relinquish your
boyish weapons,
your rifle-minded
stalking,

your dank strategic thinking.

Learn to deeply smell this
dark and gracious soil,

feel inside your given body
the earthworm's swivel
swirl and toil,

so slowly life's immense
handwriting and its
half- hidden sister
death

may now arise
like the orange
shining sun

within your
sacred flesh,

(the story's told
that from stardust

was made this
gorgeous

breathing
heaving
chest.)