artwork: robin chapman
Praise More Than Can Be Told
by Robin Chapman
And what’s left out, unseen, unnamed—
the shifting soil and rock, the fungal mesh
that knits the roots to living cloth; the tamed
path and homestead cellar stairs, its bush
of lilacs blooming in the undergrowth;
the hummingbird who comes to the red shirt
you wear, chokecherries, the chickadee who goes
ahead in the greening wood, the whirr
of a tractor’s plough far off; wild straw-
berries ripening in the poison ivy patch; high clouds;
the wind like a river pouring down the draw,
aspen's shaking grey-green leaves; turned clods
underfoot as you gain the ridge; skylined friends
as you descend again into the mystery of woods.
the shifting soil and rock, the fungal mesh
that knits the roots to living cloth; the tamed
path and homestead cellar stairs, its bush
of lilacs blooming in the undergrowth;
the hummingbird who comes to the red shirt
you wear, chokecherries, the chickadee who goes
ahead in the greening wood, the whirr
of a tractor’s plough far off; wild straw-
berries ripening in the poison ivy patch; high clouds;
the wind like a river pouring down the draw,
aspen's shaking grey-green leaves; turned clods
underfoot as you gain the ridge; skylined friends
as you descend again into the mystery of woods.
~ originally appeared in Poemeleon
