Category: Poems

Not quite as old as any hill
they are an old married couple.
Neither has a story the other
hasn’t heard two, three, or ten times.
All are shared now like a
slice of cake on a plate
eaten with two forks.

Often I see the indigo bunting
hunting insects for breakfast.
It is perhaps one of the prettiest
birds I see where I live.  I wonder
if it knows how beautiful it is.
Or if it is highly regarded by other birds.
Do house sparrows, for example,
harbor secret forbidden dreams
to one day be with an indigo bunting?
Might they close their tiny eyes and
murmur to themselves, Oh, if only!

Baby hawk screams for food
from the nest in the pine tree.
I glanced in time to see its parent
fly to the top of the tree and perch
erect, searching with its hawk’s eye.
When I see these things by chance,
a haphazard glance
a slight turn of the head
I understand that something marvelous
is at work in my life.  And I open
a crack more to the next
piece of grace.

It is possible to love the heavy heat of July
and so I will. Not glibly but deeply.
I will work at the loving, be married to it,
let my commitment be deep and binding.
This decision to love, to love All
not only the spring rain
the silent snowfall
autumn’s color
summer’s ease
but just as well her
heavy
thick
heat.
All.

I have catalogued the names of five new
wildflowers in my brain as of yesterday.
Wild bergamot–tall, pink, with a shock of hair.
Common milkweed–magenta, buxom, big-boned.
Hedge parsley–tiny and white, a delicate lass
who faints when plucked, like a Southern belle.
Prairie rose–pink and flat, jealous
of her voluptuous town cousins.
Crown vetch–tumbling extravagantly over All.
Five, I’ve learned, in one trip to the woods!
Life is full of information that I am
ready to place in my brain.