Who does not marvel at the spider’s creative saliva,

the ant’s perfection,

the butterfly’s unsettled elegance,

that the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven?

You Birds of the Air,
Hawk, Sparrow, and laughing Jay
You embody freedom itself,
delight us with your song, astound us with feats of migration
Grant us your perspective,
for too often our horizon is limited
and we are blind to the full results of our actions.

In days of old, animals believed

humans to likewise have a soul

Children mostly still think this way today.

When all is quiet and we are small and the night is dark

She’s stopped to shop for groceries.

Her snow boots sloshing

Compassion is not a hothouse flower.

Compassion needs weather:

Today I discovered a tiny handful

of raspberries ripening on a vine

that finished bearing fruit back in July.

My father’s hopes travel with me

years after he died. Someday

we will learn how to live. 

Gather up whatever is 
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled 
in the waves or fallen 
in flames out of the sky

Come into this moment

as if stepping into a garden at dawn,

quiet, tender, open to what may grow.

Be what they do not want:
Be thoughtful.

we who remain

                                     our difference

                                     is diversity

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
            Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I want to write poems for construction workers and dreamers
For revolutionaries

The … doctrine

of the communion of saints

is simple, really.

Bless Tuesday, blessed Monday.

Bless the word week, its seven

small days trail with y.

Thank you for insulting me.

You helped me see how much I was worth.

Gratitude, it happens,

needs less room to grow

than one might think—