Brett Warren, Eagle Pond

Brett Warren is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has been published in Canary, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, One Sentence Poems, and elsewhere. She favors the edge habitats and forests of the Wequaquet Lake watershed, ancestral lands of the Wampanoag people. Her house is surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com

Prayer to the Living World
By Brett Warren

May I find my way in, from wherever 
I am, past loamy bones of fallen logs 
unmaking themselves as mushrooms rise. 
May I be steadied by the give and gift 
of pine needles underfoot, by the hollow 
knock of a northern flicker, by the call 
and response of chickadees. May I be 
thankful for fur snagged on brambles 
when a vixen hurried back to her den. 
For coyote scat, starburst of berries 
and seeds, dropped in the middle 
of a root-knuckled trail. Show me snow 
split by hooves, the skittery glyphs 
of a white-footed mouse, possum print 
pressed into mud before daylight. 
I am here because I am yours. I am yours 
because I am here. May the trees 
stand their ground, feed each other, 
let us breathe. 

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Located on the Eagle Pond main trail in Cotuit at the bench location (midpoint on the trail).