Earth’s amniotic atmosphere

(Wherein winged clouds arch over us)

Cleaves to the turning globe like flesh

To feed and light and cover us.

Above the building stands the flesh,

Blue, translucent and electric,

Wherein birds fly and glide and sing,

Beasts move, trees grow: all geocentric.

Air mantles us and binds us in

And carries words about the bone

(If air is flesh, then earth is bone;

And neither, thus, will live alone.)

Coordinating earth and air,

We line the ground, and plant the seeds,

And tend the plants, and graze the beasts;

And wander with them here and there

With sounds and gesture, words and prayer.