PRACTICE

I want to say God and mean it again.

The field is empty but its dead trees are

the best kind of gorgeous. The mountains

want to mentor me in how to be alone,

to be still as the puddles where scorpions gather.

Beauty can be so shy, so painful, like Moses

beholding God’s back and burning. Memory

wants to warn me my future may look like

my past. Lonely. But still miraculous.

I am almost strong enough for the world again.

Then there it is—a cow’s bleached hip bones

scooping up twilight. Something in me wakes

like the bush on fire and calls itself a bird.