Hug the prayer before
it leaves your body. Float
it along like murmuring leaves.
Deepen the prayer to minnows, to starfish
in a wordless sea; water it into the soil,
gilding every earthworm and root.
Your prayers are both journey
and destination. Trust in your heart
that they will find your name already alight
in the cosmos, the somewhereness of you
before speech or heart, before minnow
or earthworm, before the eyeless leaves.
Even if there is no target or deity,
may the words of your heart roll on like numbers,
a living monument with no taste of an end.
Hug your prayers close, then fling wide
their cage.