Late Summer Prayer

        A muting
of all things
save the crickets,
and even theirs
an unenthusiastic
grind, wings saturated
in the damp morning air
of the august month,
when energy gives way
to exhaustion, and it to wisdom.

        Come sit
with me and I will
teach you words
from an unwritten language,
from ones
who do not expense their labor,
who sweat it into the ground,
who sing their coming and
their going into being.

        Lengthen
my days that I may do
nothing in Thy sight,
that Thy weariness
with the earth
and all that dwelleth therein
may expire over me and
diffuse me into life.