The earth is just too big, too beautiful:
I like it small, through a window, catching
the light at the day’s end. I prefer poems
haiku-size; a pair of binoculars
through which I see one bluebird at a time,
the pink bib at its throat, the lacquered claws
curled upon an apple bough with the fruit
just setting on, a green miniscule globe
in whose meat I can taste Adam and Eve,
the whole sad history of our human grief.
See what I mean? Take one small thing in hand,
open it up, and there’s another door,
and another, long corridors of views
into the heart of darkness or of light.
There’s no such thing as a small portion
once you bite in and savor the flavors.
If truth is in the details, I’m the pope
of the particular, imam of mites,
a god in the minus numbers, a worm
pearling the soil with the teensy bits
I take in and deliver, laboring on
my two-inch by two-inch ivory life.
Friends worry I’m missing the big picture.
But I can hear a chorus in one voice,
and just this morning from my study chair
I watched a master bluebird build Versailles
in a maple’s cubby hole. By the compost bin
I’ve got an ant hill of the pyramids.
My lot’s to be a nibbler at life’s feast.
Bit by bit, I’ll devour all of it!