i take my walk just in time

I take my walk just in time
under the frowning sky,
trudge the grassy, boggy dip,
down the leaf-littery path.

I share the green with black crows and white gulls.
They graze while I ponder, should I
give it up, this tinkering
with words that pilfers time
from creased shirts and dusty corners?
There’s little coin to justify
the hours spent,
and what will be its fate
on that final bonfire-trial day?

Beside my path stands a gull so near
we could touch.
Smooth, pearly gray,
its wingtips telescoped to perfect
white dots on black.

Surely God, the original
extravagant creator,
who thought it no waste
to paint high alpine flowers,
craft deep ocean stars
and decorate with this polka-dotted petticoat,
understands the urge I feel
to build, for the epiphanies of my life,
little piles of words?

I turn home with lighter heart,
step to subtle happy rhythms –
a woodpecker rattling her way up a finger of snacks
and on my jacket the intermittent pat, pat
of reconnaissance raindrops.

-V. Nesdoly © 2003