RAIN ON THE HEDGEROWS
from At the Year's Elbow (2000)
by Anne Higgins

I do desire you, God.
Your touch like rain on my face,
rain on the landscape of my heart,
like a meadow full of weedy
brown late summer grass,
full of field sparrows,
tangled vines full of thorns and berries,
pokeberry, chokecherry, hackberry trees,
full of cedar waxwings,
your rain lingering like dew on that thicket
that is my heart,
that thicket of desires, thorns, thorny questions
and leaf-berry thick hidden places
where the warblers go to eat the purple berries
of my passions, my regrets, my dreams,
fears, imaginings,
a thick, overgrown path, Lord, wet with your rain,
growing and ripening all that fruit for your
Spirit to eat,
your Spirit in the wings
of a million birds passing through me.