PAEAN

Fresh loaves warm from the baking
Brown plumpness anchoring the room
To their fragrance, taste and touch
Nourishment to eye, hand, mind and belly.
That part of one's life is not in question,
Its satisfactions do not deny the balance,
The whole containing life by bread secured.

Bright fluff of hackle floating
Centered in a dimple-mirror fringe of trees and rocks
Green silent drift of current
Widely dappled by darting swifts
Until the swirl sucks into the instant
Rainbow scattering mating of life and deception,
The elemental struggle and the flux
Of life engulfed by life.
The boundaries of flesh and spirit
Not so fine as thought by some --
We cross them often unaware.

Flock of geese alighting upon still water --
Wild geese, yes, perhaps;
The fleeting crystal moment, the graceful wholeness
Of the merging life with elements of earth
Draws me into exhaltation of discovery and redemption
And joy is not too strong a word
To name the moment, the touch.

I praise the common wine that flows our throats.
The vintage is of less concern than sharing.
Bouquet and color deepen with our awareness
And the boundaries are crossed again.
In this unlikely place and time
Shut out from patient greening friends
By God knows what miasma
(But pain is only proof of life):
What redemption unexpected of land so long lain fallow!
In the sweetness of the song that haunts our pauses
I feel lopsidedness diminish --
Cool rain upon the long-starved places --
What vintages await!


Utah 1983
M. Reynolds