{In celebration of National Poetry Month, I’ll be posting a poem each weekday through the rest of April, and I invite you to join me!  Leave a link to your poem of the day in the comments section below.}

Kindling sets flames to lick

the firebox

a cast iron skillet

takes the heat,

holds it in its open face,

and I crack the egg.

 

Just yesterday I threw compost

out to the chickens,

and the matted roots

of harvested pea shoots,

green stems sticking up

like stubble.

 

Somehow the earth

is thawing—melting

snow sets rivers running

through the field

and the chickens peck

emerging worms in the barnyard.

 

We all have creation inside us

 

The chickens, they take worms and compost,

turn it into muscle and eggs.

Me, I take these deep golden

yolks, thick and smooth, into my mouth

I turn them into muscle and milk

to feed my babe

and he, too grows:

 

supple skin stretches

over elongating bones

teeth cut through gums

even his voice

rises and shifts—

an audible, intangible

creation.

 

He does not know yet

of spring

how thin blades of grass cut

through winter’s kill

how green spreads like a wave

from the valley up this hillside,

how the lone call of the raven

is replaced by chickadees, robins, hermit thrush, and

the reverberating howl of the snipe.

 

He knows of the barnyard,

of chickens and eggs,

of warm milk.

He knows of cool mornings,

hot stoves.

 

And what do I know of creation?

Only that I cannot explain it,

though morning sun streams

through the window,

though steam rises slowly from my tea

though even in stillness

everything moves, pushing us into

transformation

 

 

(I originally posted this almost exactly a year ago, and this season pulled me back to the poem).