WHAT LUCK

artwork: robin chapman

What Luck
by Robin Chapman

to be tuned to this fraction
of spectrum we see as rainbow, rainbow,

that our two small ear-drums
move to the hum of another’s voice,

those twin stretched membranes
vibrating resonant with breath,

that these gyroscopes of our inner ear
track our cartwheels when gravity tugs,

that our tongues taste honey and salt.
What luck that we can smell the rain,

that these hands can touch, cradle,
caress this skin that enfolds us

all our days—what luck to be born
root and blossom and branch of life

into this world we’re shaped to—
to tremble in its flux

with the hunting hawk, the mouse
the layered rocks, the eelgrass meadow.

~ originally appeared in Ascent and,
subsequently, in the eelgrass meadow (Tebot Bach)