white flower

white flower

we are not all the arrowed

nation, not the action

or paralysis.  I wake to stand each morning in the 

center

of this property's velocity, mouth open

to feel the perfect pitch

of my cerebrum.  I won't be caught

reading despair, only news 

of the trees.  The oaks flay

some leaves.  The maple weeps its branches.

Birds practice their scales in the shadows

and their voices wing out

abundant.  Further on, hills with their wayward

rolling, and below, the white clover

pulls through the greening.

Momentary holy.  Moist dirt.

I call this beautiful because it is 

fractions of worry I won't 

think.  I unthink.  I stretch

through day with its idle and pasture

and the past that immediately preceded this

with its pasture and idle.

The world will stay perilous.

There is a surge of faith:  clouds and eagles and a jar

of moss.  To grow solace is to measure light

as a purpose.  We could unlabel

the world with the blade 

of a pencil.  All day, given time,

turning a line that says I might

travel this way again.

--Lauren Camp