Make a Cradle of Your Arms

--Natalie Merchant--

Count your breaths

Listen to the motion
of your heart

Make a cradle of your arms
To hold your baby sister

Feel your mind
lose its restlessness

Sing

Share laughter

Consider the details

How light and shadow
play in the room

Your mother's hands
folding laundry

The strength
in your limbs

Search the night sky
in clusters of white light
see stars
distant suns
a vast heaven
will remind you

There is a scale of things

And decide to

Stand
for the woman
carrying her child
on the rush hour
crowded bus

Be awestruck
by the stirring
beneath the soil
that will promise
spring

Prepare and share
your daily meals
with the people you love

Desire peace
in your life
and
in your world

Forgive with grace
learn with patience

Seek beauty

Protect a place
in yourself
where
your innocence
can survive

Move safely
through this
maze of a life
that will
surround you sometimes