The Poet’s Call to Worship
If a gold finch perches on your
sill, crooks his head,
and spots the world in your window
like Marco Polo on the Silk Road
to China and you guess
what this bird is thinking
If you are on a first name
basis with all the houses on your
block: the aqua house, the house
with the rock and the stripe, and
the 3 planter-geranium-house,
and you know the owner planted
her orange-red flowers like May
baskets just to divvy up with you
If each morning you tip-toe
into your garden and peer over
the embryos of beans, like the faces
of children and your heart sings,
Wake up little darlin’s
and they do, with beans
green as Henry David
If a mutt, black as soil under
the curly ferns, makes you cry
like the old man in the wheel chair
who walks
each morning with his pooch
tied on by a rope or
if you are that man
And if you shiver in a slip
of June breeze under the 9am sun
because for a moment you see
the altar
of your life, whether it unfurls
in loops and hoops
of black ink or as unspoken
banners in your heart
Then you are a poet,
called to worship.
Amy Genova lives in Muncie Indiana. She is married, has two children, one zoo animal and a garden. Other publications include the Caprock Sun, Humpback Barn Collection, and the Homestead Review.