Any Little Thing
in
any one tiny thing – choose,
say,
one of the firewood chips scattered across
the
dark brown band of the goat hair rug
on
my cabin floor, or choose the red fox
I saw out this window yesterday
stopping,
turning its head so alertly
that
it seemed to be radioactive, sitting
long
enough to allow me to admire it, then
darting
off across the same crust of snow
I
would break through
when
I walked up to see
its
dainty doggy tracks. Choose
the
chip, choose the fox,
choose
the empty Gatorade bottle
lying
on its side
on
this same rug. I
don’t
give a shit: choose
anything
you want. In that
chip
of lodgepole pine, in that
red
fox glittering like some new red sun
against
the twilit snow,
in
that plastic jug, or in this
goddamned
little keychain, guitar pick,
chopstick,
moth, you name it,
in
any one small thing you
care
to name, there is a window
a
clear enough window
on
everything.
Copyright(c) Dean Metcalf
3/20-21/2000
