A CATALOG OF ORDINARY MIRACLES

Draw me your cell, deep draughtsman!

                         W.S. Graham

 

Astonished by porridge
by frozen ponds
by pocket knives
by matches
by barbed wire
by fossils
by Spanish galleons
by celestial navigation and
maps and globes and
tidal charts

 

astonished by whales
by wolves
by mint in springtime
 
astonished by crows, rain drawn from
the tips of their ruffled feathers
by a waitress her sudden smile
by the sound of the highway that comes
through an open window

 

astonished by Shakespeare False of heart, light of ear, bloody
                    of hand; hog in sloth, wolf in greediness,
                            dog in madness, lion in prey

 

astonished by a motorcycle at
night a shooting star
by the echo of a cough
tumbling the long dark hallway

 

astonished by tornadoes
by snow and blizzard
by hail
by crushed pepper
by the mason’s arm
by iron skillets hanging on a wall arranged
smallest to largest left to right

 

astonished by herbs in glass vials
by coffee new made
by thread-bare work pants (waist 30”)
by horse shit
by pitchforks and hammers
by calluses

 

astonished by the cab driver’s riffing
on pockets and pocket trumpets 
and by who won the game

 

astonished by sand and the glass
that holds the sand
by roots
duff and ruts 
in gravel roads
under a night sky

 

astonished by William Blake
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’ d heaven with their tears
by the Book of Common Prayer
and the liturgy for burial
at sea

 

astonished by church bells and organs
and the forlorn call and clang
of buoys in mist

 

astonished by water
by piers and quays
by barges
and old men
on stone benches staring out
at a burial at sea

 

astonished by sweet butter
by your mother’s death
by your daughter’s birth
later your son’s

 

astonished by dragons
and armor and lance
and by your daughter’s French her twelve page
story written on a lazy afternoon

 

astonished by harmonicas
by clean sheets on the bed
by wooden floors smelling of lemon
by linseed 

 

astonished by a carrot with dirt on it
by garlic in its paper skin
and by anyone eating a turnip

 

astonished by poverty, speechless before its
tidal indifference
by your lack of money and the few things
you want for lack of same

 

astonished by your body the unfamiliar
slack and sag of it


and by your wife
by all good humans

 

astonished by antlers
by the hemlock tree
by stone fences
by cairns
by stiles
by windmills
by lighthouses

 

astonished by fifty pound bags of
gypsum
by lye
by rope and twine
by chains

 

astonished by cruelty and greed and by  
how the corrupt worm
themselves into the bodies
of those who murder

 

astonished by tin soldiers 
and rocking horses and wooden ducks

 

astonished by cemeteries grave markers statuary
in memory of  John Custy
born in Ireland, died May 14, 1931
by mourners
in veils

 

astonished by vines
by olives and grapes
by bread
by quail and venison
dumplings
by trout  

 

 

astonished by zero and pi
by the concept of irrational numbers
and calculus and infinity and
by Zeno’s story of the tortoise and the hare

                                               

astonished by the tango

by caesuras, seizures
and more saddened than
astonished by seizures

 

astonished by love 
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by your 90-year old father
by the dead rabbit on your porch
by your cats Biscuit & Joey
by anvil and
forge in the jay's caw