My Work is to Love the World
All the people around me lionize only
what is bright and ravishing, as though
the earth is only spring and the ochre
of fall is half as precious as the yellow
of summer.
Are thorns and petals not a single thing?
I want to school myself in another way,
to make room for things the eyes avert.
I want to root for the smallest thistle
growing unnoticed, for tiny toads hidden
between blades of grass, for the sad songs
of homing birds, for lopsided blossoms
rising and fading in the wind, for rivers
that never meet the sea. I want the earth
to know that when I look at a stone,
I could hear it, too, has a song
that nobody ever hears.