March 2018
Note: There was a good portion of my life when I struggled with addiction(s). I have been blessed by recovery for a long time, and, though no orthodoxy sits especially well with me, I have the sense that this clean-and-sober condition is an unmerited favor, what Christians call grace and Jews chesed. I had two very close relatives who died far too early, one an alcoholic, the other a crack addict. Why was I spared? "What is man/woman"– what am I?– "that thou art mindful of him/her"– me? I get these shocks of recognition now and then, as when I noticed all the natural details I recount in the poem, and the expression of love from one of my daughters.
Barnet Hill Brook
Here’s what to read in mud by the brook after last night’s storm,
Which inscribed itself on sky as light, now here, now gone–
And matchless. I kneel in the mud, by scrimshaw of rodents, by twinned
Neat stabs of weasel. I won’t speak of those flashes. Here by my hand,
The lissome trail of a worm that lies nearby under brush,
Carnal pink tail showing out. Gnats have thronged my face.
I choose not to fend them off. Except for my chest in its slight
Lifting and sinking, the place’s stillness feels complete.
Its fullness too: in the pool above the dead-grass dam,
The water striders are water striders up and down:
They stand on themselves, feet balanced on feet in mirroring water.
How many grains of sand in the world? So one of my daughters
Wanted to know in her little girlhood. “Trillions,” I said.
“I love you,” she answered back. “I love you more than that.”
Lord knows I’m not a man who deserves to be so blessed.
I choose to believe that there’s grace, that the splendid universe
Lies not in my sight but subsumes my seeing, my small drab witness.
Tonight my eye may look on cavalcades of brightness,
Of star and planet. Or cloud again. And when I consider,
O, what is man, That thou art mindful of him, it’s proper
For me to have knelt, if only by habit. Pine needles let go,
And drop, and sink to this rillet’s bright-white bottomstones.
To tally them up would take me a lifetime. And more would keep coming.
A lifetime at least. And more would keep coming, please God, keep coming.
Barnet Hill Brook
Here’s what to read in mud by the brook after last night’s storm,
Which inscribed itself on sky as light, now here, now gone–
And matchless. I kneel in the mud, by scrimshaw of rodents, by twinned
Neat stabs of weasel. I won’t speak of those flashes. Here by my hand,
The lissome trail of a worm that lies nearby under brush,
Carnal pink tail showing out. Gnats have thronged my face.
I choose not to fend them off. Except for my chest in its slight
Lifting and sinking, the place’s stillness feels complete.
Its fullness too: in the pool above the dead-grass dam,
The water striders are water striders up and down:
They stand on themselves, feet balanced on feet in mirroring water.
How many grains of sand in the world? So one of my daughters
Wanted to know in her little girlhood. “Trillions,” I said.
“I love you,” she answered back. “I love you more than that.”
Lord knows I’m not a man who deserves to be so blessed.
I choose to believe that there’s grace, that the splendid universe
Lies not in my sight but subsumes my seeing, my small drab witness.
Tonight my eye may look on cavalcades of brightness,
Of star and planet. Or cloud again. And when I consider,
O, what is man, That thou art mindful of him, it’s proper
For me to have knelt, if only by habit. Pine needles let go,
And drop, and sink to this rillet’s bright-white bottomstones.
To tally them up would take me a lifetime. And more would keep coming.
A lifetime at least. And more would keep coming, please God, keep coming.
© 2018 Sydney Lea
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