Sometimes while driving a dirt road beside a blooming canola field

Sometimes, while driving a dirt road beside a blooming canola field,
all things become simple, exquisite, undivided.
Yellows flow unframed and unforced through greens and blues.
The road rises up its wedded hill, trees touch in the east,
and grass reclines within the silent music of air
…then there are memories, and then complexity.

Sometimes from my chair in the cabin,
through the mullioned triangle of window near the peak,
just above the swaying seaweed of poplar tops,
I see a sunrise reflecting pink on the hulls of clouds,
and think, oh, to stay in this warm dark submersible,
sail mystery’s slipstream and never surface
…then the sun rises higher and the pink-hulled ships slowly sink.

Sometimes in a dream, Christ comes to share a beer and talk;
we talk of sparrows, vineyards, the smell of fresh sawdust,
the taste of fish fried over a camp fire
…then things get awkward as we have little else in common—
except (while dissimilar) a knowledge of sorrow
and a stubborn love of peace and wholeness.

So before I go I tell him I’m grateful for the healing arts;
grateful for the art of those who parse plants for the pink within.
Grateful for love that still broods over our combative lives.
“For these,” I say, “I will write my gratitude
with the largest of letters for as long as I last.”
And that’s when I feel a jammed door open inside me.