Little mink, let me watch you.
    Little mice, run and run.
        Dear pine cone, let me hold you
            as you open.

Water

What is the vitality and necessity
    of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting
    his lips to the cup.

Ask the forest.

If You Say It Right, It Helps the Heart to Bear It

The comforts
    of language
        are true
            and deep;

in a cemetery,
    in the South,
        so many stones
            and so many

so small.
    Sometimes
        three or four
            in a row.

In this instance:
    Eliza May,
        Oceola,
            Joseph.

Can you imagine
    the condition
        of the heart
            of a mother

or a father
    watching these plantings?
        I cannot.
            But I try.

“God taketh
    his young lambs home”
        is carved there.
            A few words

like water
    on a stone.
        Cool and beautiful
            like water on a stone.

Empty Branch in the Orchard

To have loved
is everything.
I loved, once,

a hummingbird
who came every afternoon—
the freedom-loving male—

who flew by himself
to sample
the sweets of the garden,

to sit
on a high, leafless branch
with his red throat gleaming.

And then, he came no more.
And I’m still waiting for him,
ten years later,

to come back,
and he will, or he will not.
There is a certain commitment

that each of us is given,
that has to do
with another world,

if there is one.
I remember you, hummingbird.
I think of you every day

even as I am still here,
soaked in color, waiting
year after honey-rich year.

A Lesson from James Wright

If James Wright
could put in his book of poems
a blank page

dedicated to “the Horse David
Who Ate One of My Poems,” I am ready
to follow him along

the sweet path he cut
through the dryness
and suggest that you sit now

very quietly
in some lovely wild place, and listen
to the silence.

And I say that this, too,
is a poem.

Deep Summer

The mockingbird
opens his throat
among the thorns
for his own reasons

but doesn’t mind
if we pause
to listen
and learn something

for ourselves;
he doesn’t stop,
he nods
his gray head

with the frightfully bright eyes,
he flirts
his supple tail,
he says:

listen, if you would listen.
There’s no end
to good talk,
to passion songs,

to the melodies
that say
this branch,
this tree is mine,

to the wholesome
happiness
of being alive
on a patch

of this green earth
in the deep
pleasures of summer.
What a bird!

Your clocks, he says plainly,
which are always ticking,
do not have to be listened to.
The spirit of his every word.

Almost a Conversation

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
    about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
    with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding
    is all body expression—

he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.