Grace on Saturday Morning

I will remember their care

as I prepare a feast from the bounty

now lifted by the hands of a woman

who hums as she packs my bags.

My serious cashier with

silver hair, shining eyes, a strong-boned face

a sculptor would want to gaze on.

The whistling man in produce

who led me to the bottled horseradish

I would not have found on my own.

In the deli department, the woman

who sang out good morning,

then artfully arranged the chicken chunks

somebody in the hidden kitchen grilled

for my dinner guests and me.

I tell Adonis I have four jugs of water

just like the one I’ve heaved,

with difficulty, onto the counter.

He solemnly nods and blesses

the water with his scanner.

Also thanks for giving me this song.

Understudy

Spider silk makes a slow-spinning mobile

of a single pine needle that dangles

from the deck railing.

Cranesbill geraniums nuzzle

the lower branches of a tall spiraea

boasting profusions of fuchsia.

Rabbit, too young to fear open air,

wears a Drishti gaze.

Invisible squirrels chuck, chuck, chuck,

complaining, perhaps, that my presence

disrupts their romp on the lawn.

I’m already absorbed in all that’s going on

when coyote lopes out of the woods—

which of us more startled?

A mottled youth, she veers back under trees

and weaves ghost-like through dappled shade.

Has she passed too quickly to care to catch

yonder napping chipmunk curled beneath a leaf?

Yellow moth rises from a cloud of buttery lobelia,

zigzags up, then down to disappear,

disguised as blossom. Ants meander in.

Red-tailed hawk swoops, a deus ex machina.

I sit still, trying to learn my lines.