run your fingers like a prayer
over every bit of the world,
saying quietly, with each
breath, thank you for
this chance to love
—Kai Skye

because if thank you is perhaps
the best prayer, then we cannot
utter it often enough

because if the world has offered
itself to us as this blue-sky miracle,
then how can we do anything but

love it, with all its storm clouds,
its human-made devastation?
Because we are the only ones

who can love our planet and each
other enough to mend what we have
ruptured, what has been riven

like a log split with brutal force,
like fabric savagely torn. Let us be
the stitcher of seams, of echoing

prayer, the thankful breath,
the quiet love that seeps, with
great gentleness, into every

heartfelt hello.