World as Church

Just think of the blossoming parsnip, or the button
quail as divinity, try to see the rising moon as so
or the touch of the iris tongue, also the early hawk
as it perches on the black oak or the thin lanky
hindquarters of the ant, the matted camellias
thundering the porch with petal, discover
the small motes of the dried pea, its husk
like the cry of the pine cricket, and the dogma
of arroyos and snow-melt, the passion
of needle grass and berries and mistletoe
in December when it reaches out to us
with its heady midriff; the world is church,
is chapel, altar, blood and body in its soft skin
and its fervor, in all the salt-vacancies
of the ocean in dawn and dusk, the affirmation
of God collects in the russet-headed grass
of summer and in the tattered fungi and the fistfuls
of snails and sand verbena and the wings
of the sycamore; the hedgehog in his hole
knows the wisdom of Leviticus, considers
passages from Proverbs because his face is always
open to the glaze of morning, as is the nude body
of the seahorse under the ocean’s momentum,
everything of earth is the krill of a cathedral,
the field and forest anticipates its potential
as assuredly as the barn owl crouches
to enwrap the vole with its talons, the gospel
manifests itself in the facets of light
and the falling of water, angels both of them,
what more proof do we need that pollen
holds reverence and constellations hold
transformation, what proof exists at the core
of this orb is there for our asking, there
like any element, in abiding beauty, the wholeness
of the finite fecund for our delight.