Returning to Earth

It happened on a day I went to the woods,

a day I wore my blue scarf, savored an almond

muffin and shade-grown coffee. A day when

I thought about my conversation with Tay

at the café— images of rocks and roots

burst forth, and a bird in flight. It happened

on the day I finished my taxes.

It happened between one thing and another.

A book about the soul, a poem about things—

shoes and metal, tobacco smoke, and salt.

Many things conspired to tell me the whole

story, wrote Neruda, not only those things

that leap and climb, desire and survive.

A day teeming with things: the rust orange

on the chimes, the mailbox’s blue. My book’s

fibrous threads, the stone tablets in the park

—the way they sing, the way they stay still.

Now it seems I can’t say enough about things.

How they connect me to a string in my body

that binds me to my soul. How every feeling

now is a stone or a book, tobacco smoke, or salt.

 This poem has appeared in the anthology A Slant of Light, Codhill Press

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