Call and Response

How simply it begins, the gaze turned
by native bewilderment or inborn acumen
from the kind adults at table, from the sapien stream
of talk, to color, shadow, form, and light:
to the purple-blue-gray shadow cast by a bowl;

the ivory column with its mute, self-evident
meaning; the tracery of branches defining
existence, softly, definitively, in mid-air;
to a dark red leaf encased in sudden ice,
so calmly become a cold, contented gleam;
the urtheater of late afternoon light

streaming religiously, overpowering cliché
from under a bank of dark, low-lying cloud;
to the pale, breathing undersides of leaves
forecasting a fast-arriving front;
to cattail seeds flying towards germination;

to thickets and tangles into which we see
but partially, the unspoken-for patches;
and water surfaces shining, ever-skating
toward a horizon. All things of the world
in a tireless call and response, tendering forms
for the how-to of being, of making, and mind

First published in Homage (Ebb Tide Editions, 2024)
Homage Travel Stories & Essays | Poems | Contents At-A-Glance