Litany for the Spacefaring: LVIS

Patron saint of crevasse and hidden contour,

your crystalline heart beats in high unheard tones.

Forest calls answers from deep layers of shadow,

ice sings back in scatter and fracture.

You do not touch but still you know the body:

height of canopy, throat of glacier, curve of floodplain.

To send light out and wait for light returned,

this too is a form of love.

O LVIS, teach us the shape of our world

before it is flattened into memory.