Grain-Sized

 

Grain-Sized

(“Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.” Hosea 6:3)

Have you watched the rain fill the potholes and
the next day the sparrows are bathing?
Have you seen the way old eyes fade
when the lengths are measured so precisely?
Have you missed the sun on a befogged morning
and refused to walk out into the gray?
Have you ever,
even if you don’t remember,
walked barefoot all summer until you
did not need shoes at all?

Have you smelled the lavender and remembered
your grandmother or the florist who loved the dirt?
Have you tasted a strawberry and remembered
the kiss of an early love?
Have you been to the beach, watched sand crabs
swim in your castle’s moat?
Have you watched the orange sunset turn to
red tide under a renewing moon?
Have you seen the ways young eyes fade
when campfires sing until dawn?

Have you felt the verdant forest coating your skin,
the boundless sky caressing your shoulders,
the breezes sigh like a joke gone wrong
that everyone laughs at because wit has become
joy which needs no permission to grin?

Have you hiked a hill until your back was fire,
but would not retreat until you stood higher than the
aspens below you? The alpine lakes show you more
from above the timber line.

And some days do you sit and do
nothing at all
while you think the world is livelier
outside your room?

Have you every wondered how someone so
grain-sized
can imagine universes within and without you
or that the divine infuses
it all like rain, like flame, like
the very next dawn.