Somewhere on the Mass Migration
It’s an expanding universe.
I imagine
you and I are fingers
of a groping green god,
budding twigtips, unfurled
leaflets drunk with light,
seeking out the final shape
of our creator—
We must practice
balancing!
I imagine
we are the arthritic toes,
too, burrowing rootlets
ignorant of one another,
exploring our dark universe,
searching out the source
of the creation—
It’s an expanding universe.
I imagine
the burst of whalebreath
we must make in surfacing
from our deep song,
somewhere on the mass migration—
We must learn to
read the stars!
Call to Worship
Whenever I’m ready to grieve
or slow to marvel
I remember this land as I’ve
never seen it,
the way it must have looked
a thousand years before I opened
my astonished infant’s eyes—
The rising chorus of ridges,
treeline after treeline, climbing
to the misty edge of Creation.
The waterfall tumbling back down
in a clear cold rush.
Before the invention of wilderness
or the need for churches,
when every bush blazed in the sunrise,
in the time before time that inspired
the myth of heaven—
Nothing but forest and sky,
wet leaves dripping after a rain.
Nectar of unforbidden fruit.
Stained glass at sunset
without a window.
Before the need for gardens
or the invention of fences,
before one piece of the Garden
was fenced off
and deeded over to “Eden”—
Rivers winding
through the shady nave of the trees.
Cathedral columns of light.
A host of insects chanting endless
praise.
Before anyone needed a pulpit higher
than the lowliest mushroom,
when every weed was medicine
and all medicines were sacred gifts
of the soil—
Whispering ghosts of people
and the other
animals who lived here then
grieve with me as I gaze around
at what the world has become . . .
Then I meet an infant,
who teaches me
with wide-open eyes
how to marvel again
at the quiet sanctuaries of green
that persist
between all these
roads and wires and signs.
