Gray Pearl
I am standing at the window
watching a soft rain
drip from the pink magnolia blossoms
and veil the green and guileless hills.
I am watching the droplets’ jagged dance
down the window glass,
their elegant pose
on the very tips of the camellia’s leaves
as they keep just for a moment
their delicate balance.
Behind me
my daughter practices the quiet, careful chords
of an old Quaker hymn on the piano.
And if,
long ago, ages ago,
I sat perched on the lip of heaven
and leaned out over that ledge
to look down into the havoc
that could be my life—
And if down through all that clutter and flotsam
that would be my life,
And if I spied this very moment--
soft and luminescent
as a gray pearl--
Tucked inside the crags,
Guarded by the silent toothy monsters of this world
slicing through their silent deep--
If I glimpsed this moment gleaming
in the cold stillness below the tricky currents
Hiding behind the gaudy reef
all teaming with its fishy flash
its flickering, venomous beauties--
If,
leaning over that ledge,
I’d glimpsed these soft gray minutes
accompanied by hymn,
I know I would have held my breath
and jumped for it.
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