Wind Dancing

He wept as he prayed,
great wracking sobs;
he had never wept in prayer
for anyone before,
(that an Easter leaf from death
should rise again)

Struck by otherness,
by the predicament
of isolated leaves on one tree,
each with a spring, summer and fall
of its own,
by the beginning bud,
the last ride down wind
to sail in golden death
on transparent singing river,
by the slip uncounted to a leaf-strewn  floor,

by predicament of ultimate singularity,
individual accountability
for the life one chooses to live,

By hope of resurrection,
life’s beginning and its ending,
how this does not belong to him,
his only how he dances
in the shimmering congregation
all summer in the wind.