May the arms of life take you up and cradle you,
holding you in woven branches,
mountains of dark, damp dirt.
Life calls rivers and oceans to fill and cleanse you,
nourishing your strong bones
and many spider-webbed veins.
May hands that once fed your tiny mouth
morsels of sweet fruit
hold your hands
show you your strength
as theirs fades.
The light of our sun streams through you,
evoking plant ancestors,
making your cells gossamer birds to fly
in this world of wind and sky.
You are sacredness in motion,
profound in your gift to me that I might see, feel, smell and taste this world.
In aging I sense the small places where you no longer fit together
the ways you drift downward
yielding to gravity,
and I feel such gratitude for how you have been my home all these years.
I celebrate this body you are now,
knowing you will one day fall,
mingle again with the earth you once were,
my spirit becoming a memory carried by you
back into the soil.
I give this prayer to my body
that it may know the joy it brings the world this day,
and that I may remember to honor its ways.
