Poetry

Spring inventory/Ursuline Mother House/Paola, Kansas

Thanks for this window, three stories up,
and the breeze in the curtains, laundered by the rain,
for the unrolling leaves, green and silver.

Thanks for the red-tile roof and the clean white
cornice, for the blue-gray wings in the eaves,
coming, going, spread cruciform.

Thanks for the quicksilver sky caught
in a bowl, for frogs in the garden,
flip-flap, chitter-chatter trees,

and that one persistent whistler whose
song flies out like line
from a fisherman’s reel.

This is my song, too,
cast out, cast
out.