The Poet’s Call to Worship

Amy Genova

 

 

If a gold finch perches on your

sill, crooks his head,

and spots the world in your window

like Marco Polo on the Silk Road

to China and you guess

what this bird is thinking

 

If you are on a first name

basis with all the houses on your

block: the aqua house, the house

with the rock and the stripe, and

the 3 planter-geranium-house,

and you know the owner planted

her orange-red flowers like May

baskets just to divvy up with you

 

If each morning you tip-toe

into your garden and peer over

the embryos of beans, like the faces

of children and your heart sings,

Wake up little darlin’s

and they do, with beans

green as Henry David

 

If a mutt, black as soil under

the curly ferns, makes you cry

like the old man in the wheel chair

who walks

each morning with his pooch

tied on by a rope or

if you are that man

 

And if you shiver in a slip

of June breeze under the 9am sun

because for a moment you see

the altar

of your life, whether it unfurls

 in loops and hoops

of black ink or as unspoken

banners in your heart

 

Then you are a poet,

called to worship.

              


Amy Genova lives in Muncie Indiana. She is married, has two children, one zoo animal and a garden.  Other publications include the Caprock Sun, Humpback Barn Collection, and the Homestead Review. 

  

Return