No 4: Prayer for my Contact with the Landscape

The full moon scrubs
the night, washing the skin
of darkness from the ground
as it rises, huge and circular,
over the flat top of the hill in front of my house.
Its glow is marred by spiny shadows,
emptiness the light does not reach.

My head is washed in moonlight,
but my legs are rooted
in darkness, a blot
that follows me,
filling my last footprint.

Help me when the light fails and I have nothing to follow.
Grant me the nerve to lead
with my poor, blunt toes, stepping blindly,
and then stepping again,
no matter how bruised my feet become
as they press into the cracked gravel.