Lenten Prayer 3

Here's to the palliated woodpecker
snapping his red suspenders
in the budding plum

Here's to the crow
shouting from yellow cedar
to the daffodils

Here's to the crowd of bush-tits
filling the quince
with electricity

And to black-bottomed bees
chanting in the candy-pink rhodie
Here's to you

Here's to shadows slanting
across sidewalks
petticoated crocus
and dogs rolling in grass

to the velvet jonny jump-up
and fussy hellebore
cool magnolia blossom
and warming soil
earthworms and dandelion
flash of wings
early sun

to all that is light
and new

Here's to waking
and wind
and seeds in the palm
turning and crumble
of soil under trowel
and standing for hours
under a generous sky
here's to you
world
here's to you.