A DIETY OF DUST

 I dance with my eyes closed

Worshipping the earth with my feet.

I need no sculpted dome

To build my shrine

The northern winds have already laid

The mighty mountains bare

 For me to preach into the open sky.

I shall build a bridge of fallen things

Across a gaping valley

No there will be no deity in my temple

But the figures I saw in the clouds

As I lay looking up at the heavens

Before I forgot where I kept

The fairytles I wrote to the sky.

I will worship

A book of forgotten poetry

A lake of tears

Will be my holy water.

An assortment of memories

I chose not to remember

Will lay on the plate of offerings on the earth.

I will kneel with my eyes closed

Holding a thread of wandering fragments 

As I say my God's name.

I will pray for all the hands

That stretched out in pleading

But lay still in longing

To reach out and grasp

The forsaken things that fell from the sky.

I will spread a carpet of dead leaves

Over the rocky floors

Worshipping the things that gathered dust.

I will sing the songs sung to me at my cradle

In your grace

And when I jump from atop

Into a gorging canyon

I shall smile

For I know that in my worlds of wistful longing

Lay an everlasting lifetime.