Spring Rites

We celebrate the rites of spring
with cross and circle, see green flames
leap from the earth, baptize with sap
our kneeling wishes and their names.

We live the energy of ants,
feel need of vines to wind around
a maple’s trunk, we flow with creeks,
with roots we burrow underground.

We wait upon the season, nights
we pray in hope the harvest yields
redeem the sowing and beg the sun
mornings to stir the flesh of fields.

We join the rites to fill the cup
of bloom with fruit and eat the bread
of body’s earth to invoke the clouds
to send up rain and raise our dead.