Birds That Alight on Faith

(Found here)

Help me also to believe in

the leanest saplings and twigs,

in something as flimsy

as a honeysuckle bloom,

as Theseus did, in my imagining, when

he tackled the Minotaur, or Icarus

when he flew momentarily

into the face of the sun.

Help in the way I’ve seen

pelicans and swans skim

mutely onto a lake,

thinking it solid as stone,

the way Saint Peter did

when he took his first steps

on stormy Gennesaret

before hearing the strife

cursing around his feet.

With only that thimbleful

of aerial surety, help me

to grasp those things

which never collapse

under the heft of this life.

~Claude Wilkinson