I take my walk just in time

I take my walk just in time
under the frowning sky,
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
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
wingtips telescoped to perfect
white dots on black.

Surely God, the original and extravagant Creator
Who thought it no waste
to paint alpine flowers,
craft 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
pat of reconnaissance raindrops.

© 2002 – Utmost Christian Writers Poets Places. Reprinted in 2006 in Poetic Spirits of the Valley – a collection of writing by members of the MSA Poets Potpourri Society.