for Pat Schneider
on the 89th anniversary of her birth

So if I write a poem each day,
that’s one kind of prayer,
which I think you tried to
show me long ago,

writing having become your
spiritual practice, after decades
on your knees, after years of
serving churches and believers,
after you no longer called
yourself Christian, though you
still adored Jesus—

you, pathfinder, waymaker,
you who embraced multitudes.

Near the end you said that writing
was one way the light gets in,
that your hand on the yellow pad
connected you to spirit, that
washing dishes at the kitchen
window, gazing down into
the back yard was a holy act,

as you set out seed for birds
hovering like angels, especially
in winter, as you planted seedlings
when the earth was warm enough
to receive them,

as you sit with me now
as the poems show up unbidden—
or did I ask for them
in some way I can’t recall?

And I feel you, deep in mystery,
smiling as they appear, these
gifts from the divine,
dervishly spinning words
on the page,

as they dance their way      
into breath,
into voice.