Photo by Eduardo Bergen on Unsplash

One morning the earth rankled me,
spread before me, bathed in sun,
gilded branches, grass, dead golden rod.
Corduroy of corn row stubble
stretched beside a pool bright
with a stab of blue that echoed the sky
arching over all.

As I progressed along the road,
the same scene presented and passed
again and again,
while I struggled my familiar feeling
of something that should be fathomed,
something age-old, something universal.
If only I could divine something deep
that had been placed some eons ago
within the becoming-human mind.

Only a cliché bounced around my brain,
about how to find and answer
when I did not know the question.
With mercy the day’s activities
soon intervened, although the rankled
feeling lurked behind, stayed with me
perhaps even entered in my dreams.

Next morning as I walked out to the car,
I heard a jay’s raspy chatter at the top of the tree,
it tipped its head, cackled loud,
dipped and settled back, as though
it had concluded its part of a conversation.
Then to my surprise from the maple
or the pines nearby, I could not tell,
came the sweet chirping
of white-throated sparrow
which I had assumed long gone
to southern warmth.