On a sun-splattered path through a stand of birch,
we walked back to his hermitage for tea, but an Indigo
Milk Cap caught his eye and he stopped,
and brought the earth to his knees.
His face drew close to that universal veil, and he touched,
          so lightly,
the stipe and wreath, the cream-smooth cap,
and the indigo gills beneath.

And after a long moment he rose to his feet
and said, “I exhaust myself with seeing,
and all I can do is plead ignorance
          for all that I’ve overlooked.”

So I picked up a birch leaf and studied,
with as much intensity given me, its heart-like body,
its pale-straw colouration, its saw-toothed verge,
the hand-fan of veins, the faint curve
of stem, and all I could utter, was,
          “Looking at something is not easy.”

We had come from the Office of Lauds,
where the Gospel reading was the parable
          of the splinter and log.

So it is,” he said, “when I’m convinced I understand,
          there my thinking ends.
When I cease my certainty, accept my errancy,
          it’s then I begin to see.”

And on that path beneath those trees, I stood;
each falling leaf, a clanging reproach,
every soft and gentle landing,
          a wrenching censure,
exposing my reflexive ranking of others.

And I pleaded, “Why can’t I learn a wide
mercy, love relentlessly, live fearlessly,
          beyond all bias and prejudice?”

“Never mind that,” said Father James. “Go low
to the mushroom, taste the glittering wood moss,
face the ground and listen, to the fall leaves fall,
then follow your desire back to the city,
          a small branching light will lead you.”

As the loquacious preacher expounded
on the inerrancy of the Bible and the existence of God,
and I, mesmerized, by his tide of words and hefty claims,
rose to raise my hands in surrender to his theological loft,
two wasps flew through an open window
and stung my palms.

And when the preacher went on about the woes
of doubting and straying from the fixed exegesis
of The Book, that “covered everything,”
and I was about to join in with a hearty, Amen!,
the piercing cry of a golden eagle,
struck my ears and rendered me mute.

And after the service, in the parking lot,
where a group had gathered to discuss the sermon,
and praise the irrefutable preacher, I paused to listen;
and when I was about to nod my acquiescent head,
a Pacific dogwood threw a branch over my shoulder
and spun me around,
and when I was about to protest — you guessed it —
a lily of the valley pressed a petal against my lips,
and led me away.

Every year around this time I call the farm.
I listen to the muted ring of the rotary phone, and wait.
Mom says, “Hello?” Her voice, careful at first, then,
“Oh Stephen, I was just thinking of you.”

The low January sun is bouncing off the drifts into the kitchen.
Sunny Boy cereal is bubbling on the enamel hot plate.
Dad has stepped out of the porch into the snow
and is using the steel grain shovel to clear a path to the tractor shed.
The line crackles and mom says, “Will you be coming home
in the spring?”

The drifts are high from last night’s wind.
But now there’s a vast great plains calm.
It’s cold and there’s a reverence of hoarfrost on the grey poles,
and the drooping lines, and the green glass insulators;
and chimes of snow crystals hang in the blue refulgent air.

With braille eyes I reach through the receiver to touch
mom’s face. Her eyes are lakes of kindness. And I say,
“Seeding time — I’ll try to be home by then.”

Now the voice goes quiet and I listen to the hum of the line,
which really isn’t there — nor the telephone,
no longer the house, or the shed, or the prairie farm.