It is only a little planet
                But how beautiful it is.
                              −Robinson Jeffers

Earth birthed the root, the flight, the flow, the bone.
Behemoth granite breached through cloud, to be the prayer
that was the being of its afternoon.

The osprey dove through oceanic dawn
to fish tide’s tireless pitch and roar of prayer.
Earth birthed the root, the flight, the flow, the bone

swarming to thunderheads of pigeons, flown
into the quiet of wind’s whispered prayer.
Into the being of an afternoon,

wind rippled stands of marsh grass, shivered grain,
shaped snow, dunes, fire, and cloud, as words shape prayer.
Earth birthed the root, the flight, the flow, the bone

as earth blushed red with iron, as veins ran
pulsing with iron through the blood of prayer
feeling the being of the afternoon.

Sequoias soared to heights of looming green
to stand in grandeur of their wordless prayer,
earth birthing root and flight and flow and bone

to be the prayer, to be the afternoon.