Leslie Monsour reads 

Desert Prayer



in RealAudio format.
     

"Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view." 
                                   — Emerson

A gleaming mica ocean, bold as light,
strewn with bright, coarse stuff — a million suns,
the shells of ancient seas and modern guns —
the grand Mojave disappears at night,

its long and open syllable of air,
the breath of all that lives and dies out there.

Surrounded by the silent sprawl of sage,
I see the stark indifference of its grace,
the glare of stillness on its living face;
I feel the hope-free weight of rockbound age,

and for an instant, heaven-reaching joy,
at poppies pushing through the wind-cracked clay.

The sudden dive when hawk and eagle soar,
is sky's collaboration with the land.
Here, eye-like burrows, socketed in sand,
surrender truth from earth's consenting floor;

here, timorous hearts keep time in fur and bone.
I know the count; their thumping is my own.

Able Muse