Thoughts and Prayers  

“Made of bone” and “she’s a turtle” penciled at the top of steno book,
Rippled from New Mexico rain or California mist or chlorinated water
From a glass (glass) on a wooden table at the Aztec Café in Santa Fe--

Code Pink flyers on the wall.. That was the beginning of the end.  In older
Places named for saints and forts, ravens and wrens fill the  background. 
Clearing the lungs of all that is old: Cowpen Daisy seeding, the last few

Monarchs,  potatoes in cellars somewhere; basements for roots and furnaces
And roller skating. We sit and pray and sing--the crunch-munch-crunch
Prayer outside, holding on to donkey tooth rosaries inside a breathing

Mandala of  burros. Shooting Star (Olli) and Cinderella 
Dancing in the sun. The blowing prayer, the buck-and-doe prayer,
The humans with newfangled chair-and-pens-and-jackets prayer

We’re here with oak and cedar, wind, leaves on the ground, birdsong.
More lung clearing and breaking of rules. Each in our own cabin
In the woods, in a limestone theater. Little Olli (Shooting Star)

Is quietly joining the circle. The world ends. The donkey rolls. 
There is groaning and dust and tiny flies. A squirrel sounds
Like the scratching of pen on paper; leaves flutter and ripple, 

watermarked. Wheels and mushrooms, Faraway lakes full of wood,
water and doubt, earth and water weed, fish and snails and murky vision--
The animals move away leaving a ring of silence.