I have built
Cathedrals of hope
And watched them shatter
In a breath of wind.
Even as they tumbled,
They were beautiful –
A million shards
Catching a sunset light.
And you asked me,
What was the purpose?
But all I could do was smile –
And watch the shower, and begin again
In the freshness of new morning,
With only a humble brick of glass,
A fragile mortar,
And a joyful heart.
Once again the heat broke with the rain,
And the sun came out as soon as it stopped,
With hours left to shine before nightfall,
And the world was clean, as clean as a new soul.
A sunbeam looked solid
In the corner of my eye
As if the turbid water
Had frozen it amber-wise,
Or time itself had stopped,
With only me still moving,
Slipping down the river
Like a summer ghost.
It’s attention that makes magic.
A very simple thing.
At a glance, a green blotch of woods
Lies limp on a dull horizon,
Yielding nothing of especial interest;
But closer up, it grows leaves and flowers,
And the shade takes a certain form,
Minutely shifting
With the tremble of the wind
In a baroque pattern
That never repeats.
Closer still, a darting hummingbird
Flashes into existence,
All blurred wings and gaudy colors,
On a fervent mission
To pollinate the world;
On his back is one white feather
For no particular reason,
And one edge of that feather
Is gently frayed,
But only because
You troubled to look.
The dignity of breakfast
Belongs to all men -
All equal in the morning,
Bleary and hungry,
Still chewing on a dream
That seemed like someone else’s,
And gazing blankly
At the horizon of a day
That stretches ahead
Like unfamiliar country
Where shadows change
And men speak other tongues.
What then? Bacon and eggs.
And buttered toast and coffee dark as pain.
For some people, inexplicably,
A grapefruit; for others, pancakes,
And the sweet nectar of Vermont.
We are all the same at breakfast –
Kings enough to eat what we desire –
And wise enough to linger
Over a final sip of coffee
Before the day’s vicissitudes
Divide us into havers, havers-not,
And dreamers-of-having,
Who are perhaps luckiest of all,
Surveying a kingdom of hope every morning
And living all day in that kingdom
Till night takes the reins again.
This is just a note
To remind you that somewhere,
Across indifferent miles,
A man is thinking of you –
Not with the glowing fondness
Of long and rooted friendship
But with the uncertain smile
Of one who has seen enough –
Enough to wish to see more,
And maybe just enough
To hope that you may be tempted
To see more of him too.
Every woman’s an altar,
But most altars leave me cold –
Too meager and ascetic, or else
Grown overrich on indulgences;
Too ancient, perhaps – too dark-ancestral;
Or newfangled, cultish, coltish, untried;
Too redolent of foreign mysteries –
Or blandly secular, as dry as fact.
Yet here you are, fresh as the new-born dawn,
And timeless as the timeless, anxious hope
That wells in me when I again behold
Those pureblue eyes, those winedark dusky brows –
And I am suddenly, fervently, religious –
Ready to kneel, to mumble, to adore –
To alter everything for a single glimpse
Of the sacred mystery at the center of you.
