So Little Effort

There once was a man who tipped his hat
and out fell bird’s eggs

How they got there was nobody’s guess
but God’s to know

Once a man stepped out of them and trees
grew from his shoes

The shoes are gone but the roots are
long and the tree shades his house

How can we attribute anything to anything at all
and not to God?

No conception contains Him but really
every squeal and tweedle audible or

inaudible is something rare and
strange with kaleidoscope colorations and

a falling together of the most splendid elements
from racing gray hounds to a sudden

standstill in the middle of a field of an
entire herd of sheep

until they go back to their munching

A woman got up one morning and
never stopped climbing

They say she’s at the ninety-ninth level about now
watering the universe with her

tears her good will and a little silver
watering can that never runs dry

I sometimes wonder what we’re waiting for
then go back to whatever it was I was

doing

On the one hand waiting
and on the other the great rush toward and

through us of everything we’re decreed to see

It’s not so mysterious nor even in one sense
theological

It simply is

The forest opens up like the halves of a melon
and all its billion leaves are shining

Our little trails on the ground one time
covered with tiny gold leaf-shaped

diary pages of the tree’s former hot season

now scattered at their roots like
school girls having left their homework to

run off to play

There once was a man and a woman
who saw each other through a

lattice work of purity and when their
marriage was ordained a drop from

heaven landed on the canvas slope of a white tent
and ran down it to water what grew to

remind us all of the incessant
incandescent bounty we

obtain with so little effort

---

10/7/10 (from The Caged Bear Spies the Angel)

Categories: Poems