Tag Archives: Prayer

Let Me Be Like Water

19 Wednesday Oct 2022

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The way water comes

In many forms,

Lapping here, at my feet,

Or droplets, from a dark sky;

Let me be like water.

My father told me

God is like water:

Ice, steam, and ocean,

The way it evaporates

Then moves in clouds

To mountaintops,

Over and over.

Let me be eternal,

Like water.

Last night, I cried,

Tears of salt, and water,

They spilled out of my body

In waves, and clouds,

Emptying my grief

Into the great God

Of the helpless-lost.

I was poured out

Into some common,

Wet universe–universe–yes,

Let me be that vast,

Powerful transformation;

Let me be like water.

One Swan, One Last Kiss of a Bee

12 Thursday May 2022

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Hog Lake Falls, a cool breeze,

One single, solitary swan.

I think I see him preening

From this vantage, far away.

Last time I hiked here, you’d just died,

And I thought, how lovely to know

I can bring you with me,

Free of the dying chair,

The dying bed, the whole dying room,

And house, where you’d locked yourself away.

Such days are ripe with feeling alive:

Prairie smoke droop their heads,

Their beautiful faces turned down,

As they wait for the kiss of a bee.

Then they will finally look up at the sky,

Say one last prayer, go to seed.

A Hideous Brightness

13 Sunday Jun 2021

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Drought year,

Everything is dying early.

We realize what is hearty,

And what is not.

Weeds, they multiply,

Even after we spray,

As if they know,

This is their time.

They sink taproots,

And suckle what is left

Of underground aquifers.

We’re breaking heat records in June;

The sweltering, unrelenting sun

Is just getting started.

How many trips to the barn,

Down this cackling road?

The day I saw the barn cat

Kill father Robin–

It was an ominous sign

For the foal.

And then I succumbed

To this hackling cough.

Death is a time for prayer,

Calling out

for whatever hope God can spare.

Cries sent, not into a dark night,

But a hideous brightness.

Prayers At Whitestone Rock 1

20 Thursday Sep 2018

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Even the birds are drawn

to the face of Whitestone Rock:

Golden Eagle, Bald Eagle, Osprey,

and the Blue Heron,

with its long, liquid wings.

We are gathered in prayer,

trespasses forgiven, under the shade

of an eight hundred foot cliff.

Its granite face, bathed in wisdom,

looks down upon us;

give us this day, and forgive us.

Absolution comes swiftly,

because it was always there,

where the trout jump in celebration,

and feast on dragonflies, butterflies,

mosquitoes, and scraps of our bread.

The Columbia, whose waters never end,

like the reflection of our souls

naked and frail,

baptized in cold water,

as we float on our backs,

and look up at the altar.