November 8, 2022

what calls us

The man I met last week is six days away from Lubec. He has been walking for 18 months,
leaning toward a purpose only his legs can explain. A friend returns to her vigil 
at the Great Salt Lake and discovers, she writes, an abundance of beauty and a shoreline 
scattered with dead birds. Jim makes tray after tray of shortbread, turning a crank 
that lays the dough flat and square. Elsewhere, someone is practicing piano, and another 
swims laps at the Y, and another packs lunch before the kids wake up and the quiet 
disappears. How much we can worry what the sum total of our efforts adds up to, 
when all around the evidence piles up in favor of the incremental. Isaiah’s footsteps 
along a coastal road. The bones of a grebe’s flightless wing. Flecks of salt in batter.
Fingertips on a minor chord. The lifeblood of a single stroke, or a sandwich, or a poem.