If you want to talk
about wealth
I'll show you my notes on
pines with their
perfumed ambitions;
on goldenrod, dragonflies,
groundhogs and much on wind—
the only thing that truly
knows how to live—
its nomadic love and
all creation riding those
sails of silk
in seizures of bliss
through this world and
some others,
and its way with power when
quietude and rage
give birth to strange
lands of light.

I'll also tell you about the time
a friend of mine was stranded in a
city far from home. A church turned
her away, but a homeless man standing
outside the monument to God gave her
all the money he had.
His hand, trembling in the needling cold,
became a radiant, disorganized religion

like these glossy motions of daybreak,
like those poplars clawing their way
to a greener freedom,
like the sky unveiling an
untranslatable color:
just a suggestion of joy
in a massive world,
one thought away
from Paradise.


Patricia Joan Jones