"Lord,
kneeling in a garden is a posture"
Lord, kneeling
in a garden is a posture
next to kneeling
prayer in the scraping depth
of its humility.
To touch the moisture
of the earth,
to feel that cloth of death
first hand-a
dialogue of dust to dust-
whispers with
soil the burden of the soul.
Kneel in a
garden, and we kneel to our grave,
to spread
our hearts into a film of rust,
to straw our
bones upon a bed of coal,
unless, my
Lord, the garden is a grave
of living
water, a font of second birth,
which then
transforms the soul into a god-
like what
the yellow iris, washed of earth,
manages to
arrange from rot and mud.
As
Taught by Crickets
A thousand,
thousand voices in the trees
echo the pattern
of a simple prayer,
to make a
pressing music from one's knees,
to cause a
single note to brim the air.
They say the
spiritual nature has a rhythm
felt most
intently when alone in the dark,
where mortal
bone and spirit feel their schism
made hard,
impervious, like oak tree bark.
They say Thy
voice, O Lord, is but a whisper
heard most
clearly in one's deepest pain,
but a sympathy
heard no clearer nor crisper
than one might
hear a soft, a muddled rain,
yet we'll
pray like sinners at a wailing wall
to ask Thy
Holy Spirit to heal us all.
