In the best of hours

I stand with my rubber boots planted

firmly in the morning

and – gawking at the yellow smoke and

bright-white silver of the metal sky –

feel like a goldfish struck

with surprise. Yes, how 

could I ever not know it deep in the dust

of my bones? This perfect sparrow 

knows it in all of his warm body 

as he calls out to the world – my 

shrub has a thousand wonderful twigs,

aren’t you jealous? And the puddles

know it, judging by the bubbly chuckles

they make as they slurp up another droplet 

of molten winter and send it into their blithely depths. 

As for the cold air, which is washing my cheeks

in fresh forgiveness everyday anew – she, too, is aware. 

Suddenly I sense a life they have lived all along, enlightened 

by primordial gods: knowing with such certainty

that there cannot possibly be anything more important

than these sunrays, 

that branch, 

and the ruffling of this tender wing.