Amen, Max, to your restored fields,
your rescue dogs, your horses. And their storied
names from the O.T. you didn’t believe
but loved the sounds of, calling Genesis
and Deuteronomy in for timothy and oats.
Amen to your kind permission to me,
your reader who saves too much, who keeps compost,
too, with worms, and the notion that names
can live in furred bodies or dirt or worse.
Much worse: Trident, Poseidon, Shock, Awe,
the necessities of water and board. Or ancient
letters P, T, S, D, or A
followed by bomb. Witnessing these
with our names on them, printing terrorist next
to American I poems, questioning all except inspiration
is church. Gut honest worship. Your forms
of nurture by the Word.
Muriel Nelson lives near Seattle where she enjoys edible organic landscaping. Her most recent poetry collections are Please Hold and Sightsinger.
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