A Prayer

There are four white oak trees
on the new land.
Each has stood for at least
two hundred years.
Each has watched wheatgrass grow,
and horses graze,
and withstood long winter
after winter.
Each watched Sherman move men
to Atlanta
before the Fulton Mills
and then Deloitte.

The ponds before them have
risen, fallen
with the acorns and leaves
and still remain.
Each branch has lost her color
time after time
without any complaint,
and with that faith
it would return again
and cover her.
The stretching peak of each
sees the river
and quiet fisherman
receiving grace
because that craft requires
it completely.

Though this land is new to
me, it is old.
There’s freshness in that fact
exceeding fact.
Wisdom flows in the roots
of the white oaks
out into the hayfields
sprouting henbits.
I feel it hum below
my cold, bare feet.
I sense simplicity
and stillness, too,
yet neither one is mine.
I wish for both
but here the both have come
historically —
and small, while the crickets
praise the silence.

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