Morning/Light/Water

She says:

All the world's water is sacred
because it is the beginning of all life

The Hindu have their Ganges
and Christians the baptismal font

but as I watch this child drink tap water
from a metal bowl
holding it with both hands
in the strong eastern morning light

I see it so clearly,
as arising from the same source

Shanti Shanti Shanti
Amen Hallelujah

The Spinners

There are ladies who sit at their wheels like Fates, spinning carded wool into yarn.

Busily their feet tap the pedals as their hands thread the simple machine that changes the wool into yarn

They chatter in a circle, as you would expect, with great straw bags beside them overflowing

They work to keep up with the universal mind

and in the summer demonstrate their craft at fairs

At Lake Chickawaulkie

One of the last places to hear dialect, if you're from away.
Girls with stretched legs and boys with furrowed brows call
"Mummah" from the floating dock thirty feet from shore
"Watch us race and swim like fish"
"Do you see the ducks, Bubbah?"

at the lake's edge
we watch them, ready to dive in,
hands forming a visor over my eyes
I look out to the other side -
the shore where a boddhisattvha sits

she blesses this little pond
and all the mothers and their babies
who, for this summer, watch each other
holding us in a gaze of complete tenderness
we don't know what next year will bring