if, like Trappists,
we professed vows to valleys,
reclaimed Forest as our first language,
widened our prayer’s wingspan
to include the ruby-crowned kinglet’s
littlest litanies nesting
in the thickets
of our ears?

If, like monks,
we strove to rise each day
earlier than ego,
made no distinctions between
holiness and humus,
love and lark.
Bowed morning and evening
to the waning wick
of how little endures.

Imagine, if you will,
what it would be like
to live as landscape,
pace your life to leaves.
Speak, and when you do,
enter each word the way
you would a monastery,
silently and slowly
as the growth
of a tree.