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—
Nice one Rob – I felt it on my skin. I like your use of the word “each” throughout the poem.
love you–
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