Status Updates From The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem

“dirt, mud, stars, water—
I know you as if you were myself.
How could I be afraid?”

“In the East, the slightest light begins
flinging itself upward
and my heart beats (never an exception) with excitement.
(My gratitude to you, dear heart!)
Though it will all vanish utterly, and surely in
a little while,
I know what is wonderful—
I know what to hoard in my heart”

“I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.
And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening is the real work.
Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.”

“The pink globes of the peonies
open under the sun’s early-morning hands.

The vine of the honeysuckle
perks upward—
the fine-hold of its design
did not need to be so wonderful, did it?
but is.

This is the world.”

“When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,
like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.”

“Therefore, tell me:
what will engage you?
What will open the dark fields of your mind,
like a lover
at first touching?”

“But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,
like the door of a little temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.”

“My mother, alas, alas,
did not always love her life,
heavier than an iron it was
as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
oh, unforgettable!”