Prayer wheel spins,
leaves fall.
The instruction is constant,
a woman’s voice
raised to the boy in the moon.

2.
See and sea
say the same
she said.
The sight of it
rinses clean.
Her tune went like that,
finding the occult in the obvious,
plain as the moon in the sky.

3.
This time of year
she began, remembering
all the others,
eight of us crammed
in a Mahindra Jeep
engine off to save gas
plunging down the mountain road.
No guard rails in human thought.

4.
But could she make sense
without singing?
Could the sun shine
without giving light?
You walk on the rocks
your feet get lost to remember.

5.
Little whirlpool
where the stream bends round,
no danger for us larger beasts
but still. She sat on the bank
and watched the patterns
form and swirl and vanish,
thought This is what I am
and why I am here.
The thought
felt like a prayer
and suddenly she understood
there doesn’t have to be a God
for prayer to work,
song in its own sake lifted.

4 October 2021