A morning prayer for men (and those similarly afflicted by patriarchy).

May I awake each day remembering
I am not the master of
all that follows.

May the light casting through the window remind me
that the uprightness of my home depends
upon the power
of a far-away sun.

May I remember how little I know of that sun,
its un-thinkable scale,
the force of its heat and invincible magnetism.
May I remember I depend on this.
And everything else.

May I remember I depend on the children
who wrestle and shout in the room next door,
without whom I may have forgotten, altogether,
what it sounds like to laugh like this.
To live as Goodness.

May I remember the sheets I throw off my body
as I rise
were washed by someone,
that the bed was made,
by someone,
that the sheets were woven,
by someone,
that they were packaged and shipped and unpacked,
and washed,
by someone.

May I remember I cast off those thousand hands
that kept me warm through the night
when I lean, now,
towards the unknown
of this new day.

May I stop at the sink to smell the cool, wet air of October.
May it still me in my tracks,
forging space between my thoughts,
to simply
to simply
encounter nothing.

May it remind me that whatever I do on this day
depends on the great will
of a Universe
that turns according to its own
mysterious rules,
unpredictable
beyond my control.

May I look in the mirror, then,
to see through, and beyond, myself
to my image dissolving
in the mist rising from the wet plants
warming under that great autumn sky.

And then, may I be grateful,
for all that I am not,
upon all I depend,
and beyond all I think I am,
for all that I am.

I am not, after all,
the master of all things,
but the one tasked to cherish them.

May I know that in this reverence
for things unknown,
for things delicate, silent,
kind and beautiful,
I find my true purpose.

May I remember
to look,
to be touched,
to see,

to love.

May I remember
I am nothing, alone.