Keeping the Sabbath
My worship is a blue sky and ten thousand crickets in the deep wet
hay of the field. My vow is the silence under their song.
–Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Dawn
The sycamore laughs,
her new leaves confident before
the storm, her limbs stretched
like a dancer’s ready for
thunder, clapping for rain.
Noon
Jasmine—the real thing,
though I’m still learning its first
name from bees in love
with those blooms, swirling breath and
nectar for their jubilee.
Moment
The hours fill, then spill
then fill again: time itself
fluent as a cloud
or tree or pebble speaking
to a friend longing to listen.
Evening
By the creek, a blackbird
stops on the wild grass. Does he
pause to scavenge seed
or signal his mate or scan
heaven for a psalm of flight?
Dark
Spring’s palette dims
at sundown, swallowed by shadow.
Enter a million stars:
all day they keep their places,
all night the rainbowed world sleeps.
Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily volunteers to promote community gardening, social awareness, and creativity. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, English Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Flying Island; also in the following anthologies: And Know This Place; Mapping the Muse; Visiting Frost.
Image via: Groups of Stars. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2003655476/>.