Today's Earth Prayer

[willowoak]

I thirst by day.  I watch by night.

I receive!  I have been received!

I hear the flowers drinking in their light,

I have taken the counsel of the crab and the sea-urchin,

I recall the falling of small waters,

The stream slipping beneath the mossy logs,

Winding down to the stretch of irregular sand,

The great logs piled like matchsticks.

 

I am most immoderately married:

The Lord God has taken my heaviness away:

I have merged, like a bird, with the bright air,

And my thought flies to the place by the bo-tree.

 

Being, not doing, is my first job.

 

        –Theodore Roethke