The Sacred in the Quotidian
Fall, 2005
Barbara Crooker
Happiness
---She loves West Tenth Street on an
ordinary summer morning.
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
And I love this ordinary summer afternoon,
sitting under my cherry tree full of overripe fruit,
too much for us to pick, an abbonanza of a tree,
I love this dark grey catbird singing its awkward song,
and the charcoal clouds promising rain they don't deliver.
I love the poem I've been trying to write for months,
but can't; I love the way it's going nowhere at all.
I love the dried grass that crackles when you walk on it,
leached of color, its own kind of fire.
Way off in the hedgerow, the musical olio of dozens of birds,
each singing its own song, each beating its own measure.
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze. Sometimes, just what you have
manages to be enough.
Previously appeared in print in Cider House Review.