—after Jane Kenyon
Let healing come
in ordinary time to the tattered
boughs of the fir tree cloaked in snow
Let it come to my sadness
walking past Santa and Rudolf sprawled
flat on their backs on a dew-glistened lawn
To the family of wild turkeys in the swale
behind Oak Street scavenging
birdseed chaff from my feeder
Let it come to the boy in the Domino’s van
delivering a small cheese pizza to the man
down the block who shelters alone
To the stricken in sealed-off rooms, in silence,
in vanishing, and to their loved ones,
who are dipping their hands in grief
Let it come to the trucker driving
his fourteen-wheeler all night
down I-95, hauling lumber
To the blue heron on the bank
of Willow Pond tuning her wings
to the key of wind
To the green snake, to the ant,
to the sweetgum tree
that knows trembling
And to the sorry, to the hardened,
to the amber shard of sea-glass,
to the sea that burnishes the brokenness