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Not my prayer but
the daffodils’ for sun and bees intoning
in such numbers their fevered mantra
of the morning 

not mine but the thousand
prayers of tuna sleek
and silver bursting through the ocean
breach in fear of no net 

nor mine the prayers
of dozing lions on the safe road
warming their heaving bodies
sans the unmistakable
scent of hunting humans   

all the unkilled bear
deer and song-dog orisons
breathed on roads suddenly still
no speed-of-headlight
death hurtling at them now 

all the birdsong more varied
more prayerful than ever
with the chattering of finches common
to our hearing woven
through the calls of species thought
too shy too rare to venture near but here
they are 

all the open hemisphere of sky once azure
now azure once again a blue
too blue to fathom except as earth’s
petition for just another day
without us 

all prayers theirs
for a break from history from this
cult of progress from the unstoppable
momentum of human toil from all this doing and making
from the churning madness of us

praying for a world precipitously devoid
of us long enough for us to grasp
how to their uncomprehending senses
we are the virus itself.