The Church in the Wildwood

 This blissfully beautiful Mother’s Day morning

I sit on an old picnic table “Church”

Pulled up into a clearing

Near the water’s edge.

 

The air is wet with an overnight shower,

The earth fragrant

With her latest Baptism.

 

Sun warms my skin

As he gently pears over the

Tops of the trees who are

So proudly dressed in

Their new spring leaves.

 

Hawks, geese, robins, ducks

And an orchestra of other unknown birds

Provide the Sunday morning

Anthem.

 

I close my eyes and offer up gratitude

For my life,

And ask the Divine to open me

To what is yet to unfold.

 

A proud mother duck

Arrives at the service

With her passel of ducklings – too many to count,

All very well behaved little young ones.

They follow her, dutifully and quietly. 

 

I ask this great “cloud of witnesses”

To witness my past mistakes,

And to encourage me to use the them

To learn a better path.

 

I offer up those things that confuse me

And ask for enlightenment. 

 

I pray for those I love

Who, crippled by aging bodies and minds,

Can no longer make it

Into the woods

For such fulfilling

“churching.”