Invitation

meditation on prayer, 08.10.19

Slow muddy churn and drift of river,
tug boats grunting barges upstream, stubborn
in their press against currents,
frantic dragonflies darting
like they’ve just lost something valuable
in a crowded station — so different
from the languorous hawks, looping, dragging jagged shadows
across the steady slide of water
and the green murmuring textures of treetops—

and I watch and think, watch and think:
I might like working on a river
I feel like that dragonfly
I wish I were a hawk, nothing but appetite and air,
nothing heavy inside me, not even my bones.

For hours, these eddies of thoughts,
as I circle the sameness of my own mind —
always restless, hovering hungrily
over memorized landscapes, searching for any new movement —

and I can feel You here, a warmth, silent and certain as gravity.

Some insistent sense tells me:
my thoughts are thoughts
my feelings are feelings,
cozy script of angst and longing,
spiritual…