Once, my son-in-law, asked me “How do you pray?”

All I could think to say was, “I breathe, mostly.” That is still true today, but I would add: I sit. Especially in nature and as one Buddhist friend says, I listen for clues. This poem is one example of one such morning, me sitting in the shade of the ligustrum in my backyard.

this too–a prayer

in the exact crook
of the chaste tree
that leans itself into the light
like a warm conversation
over tea and bread

a cardinal        cadmium
lit like a bulb sits 
on the branch
bright in the sun

but just for an instant
and then he is gone

flown over my shoulder

as i watch him go
—a yellow finch aglow
on the sunflower
feeding on this common seed

just beyond a frond of grass
plays in the light
this too
—a prayer

& the thrum of this mud
under these bare feet

like the anole
his red dewlap
establishing his territory

i am established in this mud

how the hummingbird flirts 
with the turk’s cap

and now the swallowtail
butterfly      black and yellow flash

a breath 
a breeze
the song of the wren