Finding Good

Mary Crockett Hill

There is some

in a selfish cat

(perhaps the sweet whorled ear

where the Mama's petting voice

curls itself to sleep)

"oh precious, precious one..."

There is some in the sky

and the slips of wavering air

that do not seem quite to be sky.

There is weakness

in many of us

and that is also good

for the weak do not care

how they love — shameless, they

gnash their teeth and howl.

There is some.

There is some.

So at last

what good we find

may be balled together

like scraps of leftover foil

and after a while there might be enough

for people to stop by the roadside.

To stop and photograph it.

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Mary Crockett Hill lives and works in southwestern Virginia. She is the author of If You Return Home with Food (Bluestem Press, 1998), winner of the Bluestem Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in American Poetry: The Next Generation, Poetry Daily, Boston Review, River Styx, and Pleiades.

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