Sabbath Suggestion

It comes walking,
bright and sizzling across
the bare bleached table
of sky. Heavy with the smell
of asphalt baking, and thick
enough to make our hurrying,
rushing, teeming lives grasping
for more and more, unable to see
the signs, stop. For there is shade
here beneath the oaks, gnarled
by fierce heat, cupping
their great rough arms
over this patch of earth
where the air feels thinner,
where the breeze scents green
and Sabbath steals up and shakes
the sleep out of limbs and blinks
shadow into our eyes till we
grow heavy as the rock these roots
roost among and settle
if we are wise, into the bosom
of shade cradled between earth
and sky, between work and do,
between earn and spend, between
all the things we must attend
as the cicadas sing lullabies
into the heat of a Texas Sabbath sun.