Life in a Day

            To see a World in a Grain of Sand
            And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
            Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
            And Eternity in an hour.  -William Blake

I crawl out of bed to sit on the green banks of dawn.
The mist on my face, pure as water from struck rock.
Beyond awake, alert to connection,
I can see the soul of mycelium.
Every thread, held by another.
Every constituent, nutrient, filament: a fellowship of light.

By noon the clouds look like question marks.
By afternoon, I’m a treasure-forsaken vagrant.
A sole-being. Marked by self-preservation. Parked in preoccupation.
Grey with worry: A friend’s chemo. A son’s progress.
The swelling cancer of a distant war.
Agonies of our addled earth.
Even leaves of trees look like anvils, weary of fall,
with little hope of spring.

Shrouded, the evening. Dim, the sky. Dead, the wind.
I stir supper’s stew. Look for carrots. Find a stick.
I slip into sleep in the endless streams of popular shows.

Somewhere in the night, some flicker of moon shadow,
playing on the shell of my hollow soul,
my eyes open, I’m desperate for dawn:
            I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
            from whence cometh my help.

Praise the first glow fringing Mt. Maxwell,
praise owl, praise otter, praise the lions of the sea,
praise hawthorn, honeysuckle, hummingbird, bee,
praise honey and wine, praise confit of duck,
praise the whorled radiance of wild blue phlox,
praise coffee grounds, orange peels, egg shells, and earthworms,
praise compost, praise hope, praise the seedling of night,

like Blake’s wondrous geometry in a grain of sand,
so much like our hearts,
how everything on the inside is larger,
and awaiting discovery.