for Henry Taylor

Take a walk down Canal St.

Buy one of those crispy horn-shaped buns

from the lady at the corner bakery.

Eat it as you watch the two boys

dangling their lines off Salmon Weir Bridge.

Sit inside St. Benedict’s.

Watch the sputtering rows of vigil lights,

the way the wax bends the air

as it evaporates.

Take delight in tangled things:

your daughter’s coppery hair,

the fading lines of your fingertips,

the trail a swallowtail makes

as she tastes the asters in the garden.

You need not concentrate on

strictly rural images.

Park across from the power plant;

follow the grimy path of one fat black pipe.

Keep your eye on the red Trans Am

as it volleys down Telegraph Rd.

This is easy. Move on, now,

to the more difficult preparations.

Study openings, memorize

the patterns of house windows,

the shifting lulls in your conversations.

Dwell on one vast vacant area:

your own loss of hearing,

your inability to understand,

the memory

of the palms of your mother’s hands.

Then go into the field.

Find something that grows,

something long and aspiring

that points to the sky,

tries, in fact, to be part of it.

Explain to it

how it will be better this way.

Take it in your hands,

not reverently exactly,

but with respect. And keep it wet.

Remember that little thrush you saw                                      

this morning at the edge of the canal?

Try to see her now: a disoriented worm in her beak,

her claws, two tiny scythes,

gripping the gentle mess of twigs and feathers

and string into which she put her children.

Hold all this

as you begin the chosen pattern.