Prayer

Take
the tabernacles,
temples, and cathedrals,
take every desperate coquette
plagiarizing love
with regret’s archival ken —

Take the mascaraed canticles
batted at each passing soul —
Liturgy’s greedy flirtations
and the crucifix-cleavage —

Take the loveless hands
hiking up sequined psalms
at hope’s every disciple —

And take the loveless mouths
murmuring acts of salvation
to every starved heart
that longs for relief
of some original sin
in the last available room
at the top of the stairs —

Give us instead
a wild-haired dawn
conducting the wind’s choir,
trees speaking in all tongues
and the grasses’ abandoned sway —

Give us the sea
chiming in from every distance —
Stones and stars seeking no end
but their own holy silence
and the night, ecstatic on its knees —

Give us the moon’s generous palms
worshipping morning again —

And then a ragged amphitheatre
of shrieking crows
raping the last of the corn —

One gleaming acre
of what God has not devoured,
and the small dark antics of survival —