Ask for a toy-size pan
in which exactly one egg
might be fried. Stop testing
the air for rain or the milky
steam from a rice cooker which
isn’t there. Hunger can be scaled
down to two onions and a whole
loaf of bread: abundance. You go
out to do work in the world,
for which you are thankful.
Cedarwood and juniper, grave
note from a wand of rosemary.
The telephone reminds you
of obligations and appointments.
In between, your mind rehearses
for some calamity or ultimatum.
Silence is a portrait the moon
may have left in the well.
Your hands make so many gestures
for what they want to contain.
A friend writes about swans.
Another sends pictures
of palaces and bombed-out
villages. At random street
corners, the startling blue
of bearded irises. Every morning,
birds in the dogwood. Every night,
a precise geometry of cricket cries.