Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

July 18, 2015

Sitting on a hay wagon in the flats after the fair, tired.

 

An hour ago

High summer mustered all

Mounted

And rode out of the boiling west

Countless horses before and behind

One great deluge over the whole wide earth

Riding on, riding on

No sooner come

Than gone.

 

Now

As if a slow fire flamed in the hills

Languid clouds like smoke

Idle along

The steep green slopes

Breaking here and there

As the elusive vision of God

And everywhere summer

She walks on

And everywhere

All is calm.

 

Amid this majesty

Of cloud and light

The diminutive but dancing body of a swallow

With an exuberance too big for its tiny frame

Zipping here

Now there

Across the open sky.

 

Isn’t it a wonder

That amidst power and space such as

This

This one small life is sustained?