On a Normal Tuesday
Brandon Cook
On a normal Tuesday morning, around ten,
Clouds of fog, dirt-tinged, drift in,
Down, along, and across the ridge
Filling the farm bottom with trails of streaming white,
The gleaming of a sacred light
To bridge the dirt and sky
In town, a bell rings
And the great storm of earth and sky keeps rolling, threshing like a mill, through its seasons, something too subtle to espy
Throwing words into the sky, unknowing
Our blind prophet, this earth, ever speaking
That tide and stars most reliably mark time
And so, too, the migration of the geese
The felling of a scythe
The occasional dipping down of sky, in mist and fog
We could be working instead of heaving away from shore, across the bridge in your battered truck
To find some place to stand and fish and hope for luck
And my God, the world is always just like this, waiting for someone to step back and take it in
As trucks park and ripe fruit is unloaded in the market
Red and yellow and green
The world so full of such bright things
Meanwhile,
We land like Martians on happy soil, unloading our tackle boxes,
As we watch the fog pour through the trees
Knowing we need, sometimes, to be covered
Just so, on this Tuesday
Surrounded by so much miracle that it hurts our soul and makes us turn away and, like monks, keep our silence
Our hearts blinded with the pain of too much seeing
As bluebirds sing
And the morning owl takes wing