The Sycamore on Praise

A way to stay put is to feel Earth tilting—to know its vast surface curves, that the sky’s brightening is not the sun flattering you with its attention, just the speed at which you’re spinning west. You’re a speck. You aren’t meant to last. Seeing death everywhere, you can choose despair, blunt your roots on rocks, accuse the cold wind as it lashes your limbs then train your shape to the synonym for “whip.” You can rip the sky to skim water. Or, you can watch yourself change, marvel how death mottles you with strange spots, wrinkles your skin and plumps your veins. In the shade, you can love what repeats— branched river and snake tracks in the leaf, the fruit dangling like suspended suns, the years’ cycling, the slant-rhymed seasons— or the heron, like a gray beacon on the same high limb each afternoon— our daily habits, hearing a tune in thunder, words in the shaking leaves. Praise the stuttering flow of light off waves. Praise the linking wind, the sudden rain’s promise that what was will be again. Praise lush soil, praise infinite patterns of which you’re made, to which you’ll return.