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Earth Dweller

It was all the clods at once become

precious; it was the barn, and the shed,

and the windmill, my hands, the crack

Arlie made in the axe handle: oh, let me stay

here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;

let the sun casually rise and set.

If I have not found the right place,

teach me; for, somewhere inside, the clods are

vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing

for the saints forever, the shed and the windmill

rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.

Now, I know why people worship, carry around

magic emblems, wake up talking dreams

they teach to their children: the world speaks.

The world speaks everything to us.

It is our only friend.

William Stafford

q

Things are not what they seem to be; nor are they otherwise.

            Lankavatara Sutra

 

Dishwater

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother's boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens,
over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

 

            Ted Kooser