Plea for Single Focus

You saw double today when you said you saw the wind
riffle the tree tops while the waters lay still—
there’s always a child playing house or going up in a swing,
and an old man, lame or blind, going downhill.

Though the sun invades the summer burning with pollen,
the dark nights of winter lie heavy like flesh in pain,
there’s always a picnic with a full moon on the river,
there’s always hay to be made before the rain.

A farmer plants apple trees, his young son watches
from the stump of an old one cut down by an ax or time,
lilies bloom sweet in their beds before they fester,
bells describe weddings or funerals by their chime.

A man lifts walls of a new house set on a hillside,
sows grass to hide a raw grave with its feathery touch,
on a rickety porch in the valley a small helpless woman
rocks slowly, finds even that effort almost too much.

Oh, see with now’s round-eyed appeal, hold and cherish
love’s warm hands like wheat grains at harvest, sweet apples and red,
remember how water dissolves the dry desert’s rancor,
that a vision turns stones of fact to miraculous bread.