This peace shall be rebuilt
In small circles
With only as many rocks
As each one of us
Will hold.

Some mornings
I covet half-carat diamonds,
A pied-à-terre in Paris
Season tickets.
Some mornings like this a pine scented kitchen floor
An empty dishwasher
More dawn.

I read from the work on work
by a silent generation poet
about his 600 revisions of one elegy
the dictation transcribed by a woman in his hamlet
while he points the remote at a seasonal sport.
The plate and fork he daily rinses —
And remember why Shakespeare’s Sisters.

No words will come from the high tech cubicles
The free bowls of golden organic apples
Peets coffee urns
Company umbrellas
bikes and helmets
The piped in virtual jukebox
Rows of red bull and mountain dew.

They will come
after the wing back South
the jet lag
the airplane cold
From still young redwoods
lining the wide flat streets
Winter fruiting pyracantha
Olive trees like the
Golan Heights
oblivious to attack
and
Surrender.

Just this multi striped woven Guatemalan table cloth
this heavy cotton with hand tied fringe tickling
my right knee
tucked under the orange table painted by
that slowly dying artist.
This thirty dollar bargain from the stall in a town
whose name I have already forgotten
just up the hill from the water taxi
that carried us too fast across Lake Atilan
to buy things.

We chose this one perfect craft
handmade by an old woman
whose grandchildren watch her demonstrate once again
how she spins the plain brown balls into spools of thread
and dyes them with all the colors of hillside and marsh
into a piece of material
that is all the beauty I need
every morning
every meal.

I saw her sweeping around the boxes
In her Zen bead store.
Lost her lease perhaps
or the fruits of her dreams.

I have done the same thing today
the packing and the strapping.
Leaving behind a few colored folders and
Three miniature cacti
On the windows of my ministry.

My father and my brothers kept lists,
Hundreds of birds randomly spotted or tracked
in garbage dumps, salt sea marshes, and lupine meadows.

This squirrel-proof feeder was on my list for many holidays,
passed over for lavender bubble bath and pearls.

I watch the visitors come shyly, knowing only to call them red-beaked or
grey-tailed, gorging on my fancy black seed.

In the garden aisles
of the discount mart
fully blooming geraniums.
This year of skipped over Winter,
Spring came in a rush of early migrating birds and one drench of pollen.

Two weeks early this year
already magnolia flowers and red geraniums,
zinnias even.
Roses nearly bloomed out
masquerading as spring.