I seek a larger congregation, ceiling taller than pines
the house of the Lord, you might think, of eagles
and the cascading fall spraying snow-melted mist
on trail-making fauna, monarch butterflies encircling
flowering branches, lupine spires blooming blue,
purple, black ants scuttling, the metamorphic
boulder a pew, so we sit, face the glacier-fed lake
and the ridge on its other side, wind and rushing
waters percussing, the hymn, the worship song,
your hands tapping gently on my back, a chorus
of sounds as everything seems smaller, the life
that bustles and scurries below where the lake
and mountainside meet, two people a passing speck
to the hawk, lumbering giants to the deer mouse,
the mountain itself all sizes, smaller under our feet,
its true depth invisible, its subterranean ranges
rippling a boundary over 400 miles beneath.
It’s like this, you know, surface and subsurface,
parts we show, the deeper rocky ridge moving
in seismic waves, the impassable liminality
between the mantles, the way a breeze touches
my face, softens my lips, releases the psalm
I didn’t know I was praying.
beautiful.