Take this piece of blue rag cloth  I roll up the edges as a sow bug rolls out of

        danger

   I remember laying down on the stark wooden pew bench in a church

     scented with myrrh and terror

    I remember watching the baby jesus looking 

     at his effigy

     on the cross

     the bleeding

    of wine and host the din and the bla bla bla of choir rolling up the pages of a missle thin

    thin

    paper with tiny words that meant nothing.

  Now I take the blue cloth and hang it on the fence with a prayer written on it .

  I’ll breathe into the gold.   I’ll give my breath up for the dead   for earthquake   tsunami 
  frost.      Extinction.

  For the lipstick red    sacred owl song  and  moon in exhaltation

  my  breath  belongs to a

           Manzanita 

   fire in winter    starlight     then night    then sky void of moon 
  then fox print along the morning path.

 the barn where the wind rests in the evening right before supper.