Prayer to be Still and Know

Lord, let my ears go secret agent, each

a microphone so hot it picks up things

silent, reverbing even the hum of stone

close to its eager, silver grill. Let my ears forget

years trained to human chatter

wired into every room, even those empty

except of me, each broadcast and jingle

tricking me into being less

lonely than I am. Let my ears forget

the clack and rumble, our tambourining and fireworking

distractions, our roar of applause. Let my hands quit

their clapping and rest in a new kind of prayer, one

that doesn’t ask but listens, palms up in my lap.

Like an owl, let me triangulate icy shuffling under snow as

vole, let me not just name the name

when I spot a soundtrack of birdsong

but understand the notes through each syrinx

as a singular missive—begging, flirting, fussing, each

companion call and alarm as sharp with desire and fear

as my own. Prick my ears, Lord. Make them hungry

satellites, have your way with their tiny bones,

teach the drum within that dark to drum

again. Because within the hammering of woodpecker

is a long tongue unwinding like a tape measure from inside

his pileated head, darting dinner from the pine’s soft bark.

And somewhere I know is a spider who births

a filament of silk and flies it to the next branch; somewhere,

a fiddlehead unstrings its violin into the miracle of

fern. And somewhere, a mink not made into a coat

cracks open a mussel’s shell, and with her mouth full

of that gray meat, yawns. Those are your sounds, are they not?

Do not deny it, Lord, do not deny

me. I do not know those songs. Nor do I know the hush

a dandelion’s face makes when it closes, surrenders, then goes

to seed. No, I only know the sound my own breath makes

as I wish and blow that perfect globe away;

I only know the small, satisfactory

popping of roots when I call it weed and yank it

from the yard. There is a language of all

you’ve created. Hear me, please. I just want to be

still enough to hear. Right here, Lord:

I want to be.