Lord, I confess there are days I envy your birds. Not so much their hollow bones
and feathered wings that give them flight. 
        It’s that no one tells them to hallow your name, or how.

You say you have every one counted, know when each fledgling perched on the edge
of its nest feels the needful prod of its mother’s beak between shoulder blades,
        you see them jump, flap twice, fall. They still fall.

Lord, do you see them falling? Somewhere over the green moss of Washington State,
four pilots running routine flight maneuvers collide in their black war hawks.
        Their soft bodies hit every branch on the way down.

But the mama bird will not demand to know why. She will not fail to pray
for twelve arid months. She will never casketside hear the phrase,
        Everything happens for a reason.

She will not spend her nights on theodicies, will make no attempt to justify the ways of God to man. She knows nothing of God or man, lucky mother.
       How light she must feel

unburdened by the many heavy doctrines I spend my life beneath. Perhaps that’s really how she has flight, not science or aerodynamics.
        Lord, I’m sorry. Lord, I can’t imagine you’re very easily offended.

I know that pain is only human. I guess what I mean is, if others are right,
and we do get a second chance in this life, I think I’d like to return
        as something less tender.

Somewhere under a Kentucky blue sky, I walk my neighborhood streets
as a thousand birds sweep overhead
        held up by some unknowable gift.