Walking Prayer

Thank you for this tree line of red maple against blue,
each leaf flipping over and back, sun blink.
Thank you for the dark in leaf banks the sun can’t reach.
Thank you for this breeze that sweeps the pond
so it shivers like a satisfied animal. Thank you for this animal
walking behind me. I would be as devoted
to you as she is to me. But I am not. And I am sorry
for the countless times I have turned away,
though you have counted and know their number,
how my harm ripples out, traveling through my beloveds
and beyond, across this and other landscapes,
until the moon itself may be pocked by my pride and disdain.
Forgive my claim that any action of mine
may touch the moon. I have confessed, but I forget,
choosing instead to remember wrongs done me
large and small, which you know also.
Thank you for the path that circles the field and skirts
the river as it moves from grass in light
to shaded earth, pebbles cobbled into its surface
by a thousand feet. Thank you for the river,
tugs pushing their trays of coal upstream against the current.
Thank you for this day, like no other. Continuous
flow from the center of being, what are you
that you give without ceasing, you open yourself
as we fade? What is man that you pay him such mind?

This poem appears in The Home Issue of The Mockingbird magazine and the newly released collection Sober Ghost.