And my prayer for you is that you would pray,
And my song is about you singing
And the leaves in the park heave as tide like the anxious breath of one newly in love
A mother with strong arms holding her million younglings on her hip in the august breeze

A dangerous thing
I am ripe as lust

A false moon hangs over our heads
it leads us back to Mecca where there is water
It is not nighttime
but we are

we cut the knife
we shake the earthquake
summer let us talk quietly.

The cumulus above makes pictures that call my attention back home
to a face of a girl I know not
her eyes where the string from which the moon would dangle
a hawser kissed by the morning dew
her hair is modestly wrapped
like a nap in the shade
when she looks away it’s like a prayer
to a god that I don’t believe in

The evening zephyr will saunter
through this chorus of reaching arms
it is naked and unashamed
while the sun is beneath our feet
the stars haven’t aged a bit
but they watch us grow old.

–Benjamin Del Shreve