Five gifts of a birthday hike

A woodpecker: toiling in a tree

Deploys his tiny jackhammer

The sound as if one dropped a nut into a glass jar

And shook it madly

Another bird: Ta-WHEEP Ta-WHEEP Ta-WOO

Whose earnest hymn is sung

In raspy and divided tongue

A tiny moth: brilliant blue

Against the green and brown and grey;

If all it was born to do

Was to elicit one “Ah!” from a passing friend

Then, my little one, your brief life’s work

Is done

A spring brook: the run-off of May

Has cut deep into the soft land

The water dancing right, then left, then right again

‘Round an obstacle course of rocks

Leaping then some feet below

Into a pool, a performance

Any sedentary patio fountain

Would envy

The last gift, as I step upon the toes

Of a long silent sloping hill

Straight-trunked pines like floor lamps

Car-sized boulders like great overstuffed chairs

Carpet of spreading shrub;

I might be walking

Past the living room of God

—2016