The Pace of Gratitude
Have you seen an inchworm crawl on a leaf,
cling to the very end, revolve in air,
feeling for something to reach to something?
Robert Lowell
“For Elizabeth Bishop”
We’d walked all morning, in the woods sometimes
and sometimes across a farmer’s fallow pasture.
They’d said before we set out we’d be arriving
just past noon. Oh there’d be breaks, ways
to bend into the unfurling morning to count the ribs
of Maidenhair ferns on the side of the lane, say : oh!
how they grow, how they grow while we pass
by and how they touch up into their small sky to find
a slant of light! And one among us, maybe two,
stay longer than the rest of the few who kick up
rocks that fall down the wash-out (there’d been
heavy rain the day before) and if not rocks
clumps of mud. But the some, eyes still on the fern,
or beside the vernal pool those others walk through
without a clue of its value, bend their open
hand to catch the reflection: a fork of white birches,
three it seems up from one stump; or a hollowed
out sugar maple some ground squirrel may have found
nosing out from a nest yesterday’s storm-push,
wind bully that it was, twitching on the ground, and this
hollow mouth is still dry and still invites, warm
and, when needed, a cry of delight away from
the predator sky. While the others climb, some
of us sit a while, and reach back a hand, a half
a handful of cashews, and the arc of gratitude
catches somehow: the coat, dew flecked,
becomes a thousand liquid prisms--it’s just
the right moment for such a wonder on the soft
moss, a marvel all the ones hell-bent ahead
will miss. The sequin eyes shine and shine,
can you believe it? in the dark of this arduous
walk, beside the ferns and the vernal springs
and all because we stopped, lent back a hand,
to say thank you, thank you for making me see.
No comments:
Post a Comment