I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her poc
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone o

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.
The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.
She leans her long neck and tongue

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,

Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.
It flows through me
like the blue wave.

The river
Of my childhood,
That tumbled
Down a passage of rocks
And cut-work ferns,

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, lik
the wings of a moth in the beak of
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hum
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there t
Here the clam deep in the speckled

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked