I carry water
every day
and say a prayer
at the sky.
This birdbath
will one day
draw a crowd,
but for now
it's pure and holy
-- empty --
And I say a prayer
of thanks
at evening's end,
when I
bail the water out and
scour the sides.
I wouldn't recognize
a whiporwill
from a meadowlark
but the silence here
becomes a kind of friend,
resonant with
the lonesome wind
and the shivering
of water,
that goes out as high
and far as my highest,
farthest self
through the boundlessness
of blue.
It's another part I take
out to the compost,
to find it
all worm
so full and wriggling it is
with life.
