1
A magpie feather gleams in the grass;
today you are not having open-heart surgery,
nor are you strapped to a hospital bed,
inhaling oxygen; you do not mix cement
and sand in a wheelbarrow, nor did you sleep
the night in a field off an interstate highway.
This morning you live in a sparrow’s warble,
in pale green leaves trembling in sunshine.
You catch the curling wave of the day
where peas flower on a trellis, where apricot
blossoms tinge the tips of a hundred-year-old tree.
Weeding in the garden, you get stronger
as you dig; you become well, island, field;
out of nowhere, a rough-legged hawk
glides downward with outstretched wings;
aspen leaves flutter without wind. When you’ve
worked this long, your art is no longer art
but a wand that wakes your eyes to what is.

I’m walking in sight of the Río Nambe—

salt cedar rises through silt in an irrigation ditch—