A Memory of Prayer

My shins are dirt-covered. My hands tighten
round piles of leaves. These trees rise round
clothed in woolen bark and silver lichen.
Stained glass sky, branches flux and foil,
and kaleidoscopic light strikes the ground
whose green intersects the red soil.
This cathedral of helices, of dust
motes that are caught in beams of eye-width light
is where I wait to be lifted beyond
this ground. Lifted bodily through the hushed
leaves. It is for this my soul I do dight
with hours here. Pine needle-awned
knees press the dirt. Here a quiet voice speaks
between the croaks and mutters of birds’ beaks