Art Lesson

The cat sleeps in a stupor of tuneful breezes

loaded with wind chimes and finches’ chat,

waking from time to time to lick a stripe or scratch

a twitch, then spills itself again on Laura’s setee,

too drunk to mind the brawling crows or pounding

from the woodshop where my daughter is making

a dollhouse and sweats as she rasps her plank

or labors with a back saw.

Sometimes she mars the wood and has to start over,

for faith, she learns, weighs more than force

in the art of getting it right, her dream house.

A wren flits back and forth building a nest

in the beams, in the pine-sweet air

where spending oneself is sleep bursting open.

(in What a Light Thing, This Stone)