Trust

by Thomas R. Smith

It’s like so many other things in life   
to which you must say no or yes.                                    
So you take your car to the new mechanic.   
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.   

The package left with the disreputable-looking   
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,   
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—   
all show up at their intended destinations.   

The theft that could have happened doesn’t.   
Wind finally gets where it was going   
through the snowy trees, and the river, even               
when frozen, arrives at the right place.                        

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life   
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.

From Waking Before Dawn Red Dragonfly Press, 2007

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Offering by Laura Foley These woods on the edges of a lake are settling now to winter darkness. Whatever was going to die is gone— crickets, ferns, swampgrass. Bare earth fills long spaces of a field. But look: a single oak leaf brown and shining like a leather purse. See what it so delicately offers lying upturned on the path. See how it reflects in its opened palm a cup of deep, unending sky.
Read more
A Mark of Resistance by Adrienne Rich Stone by stone I pile this cairn of my intention with the noon's weight on my back, exposed and vulnerable across the slanting fields which I love but cannot save from floods that are to come; can only fasten down with this work of my hands, these painfully assembled stones, in the shape of nothing that has ever existed before. A pile of stones: an assertion that this piece of country matters for large and simple reasons. A mark of resistance, a sign. From Collected Poems 1950-2012 Norton, 2016.
Read more
Thinking by Danusha Lameris Don’t you wish they would stop, all the thoughts swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage? I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights. Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner? I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins. I should stop using plastic bags, visit my friend whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny. I wish I hadn’t said Patrick’s painting looked “ominous.” Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called. Does the car need oil, again? There’s a hole in the ozone the size of Texas, and everything seems to be speeding up. Come, let’s stand by the window and look out at the light on the field. Let’s watch how the clouds cover the sun, and almost nothing stirs in the grass. From Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems  Grayson Books, 2017.
Read more