San Isabel, June

I.

Dawn, overhead and heavy.

I am
5 miles off the motorway and 2,000 feet up
Pray:

Hips bruised
sunburns. How steady I feel this morning
how thick the stream-clean legs
how pinked with sting
Pray:

soundless, still I am
woken up to see God
scalding the morning
onto the lips of the valley
Pray:

cold
cloth grips the muscle
of my back new
cold from a clear runoff
through ribs
Pray:

I am deep in grass
I am cold in air
I am sun-untouched as yet
Wind off the hill:

each

shifts a new body
in a taught thin hammock
unzips a damp bag
to bring a stale limb to air
elbow
hair to uncoil from wool
sock to roll off and foot to inhale
and to graze
the weighted grass
Pray:

Each, alone, consults the sky
for time, and some, location

all new to new body, all
rocky on assumptions

crinkling, rumpled
heavy

meet each to each
Pray:

At the river shouldering to pass
toothpaste and unpeel
brushes from Ziplock
Pray:

I love them, each, best.

All birds
all gold
all warm tip of Ponderosa
all blue shadow on
purple faces

I love them each before water
or cinnamon
or the one now stumbling:
slowest to morning

each, each unpeeled child each now, before
later giggles
before later knock
Pray:

They are good—