ANY LITTLE THING (poem)

This poem happened one evening in front of the wood stove in my log cabin on Old Ski Run road, above Joseph, Oregon. The day before, looking out the cabin window, I saw something which I still remember, years later.

 

                                         Any Little Thing 

In any 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