for another poem to document
the clack of acorns falling
from the tree,
for another poet to sit
at a table cleared of all
but oil stains from some
previous feast?
What urgency requires
a document be made of things
that the mouth has tasted,
all the secrets slipped
into the body’s crevices?
Why whittle songs
out of the ordinariness
of days, their thinning larder
and their pickled stores?
Someone counts the stones
that lead up the temple steps.
Someone weighs the grains,
pours them into burlap sacks.
And someone draws the tiller
from one end of the row to another,
before turning around again.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES