Jeff Hardin
Today I Will Concentrate
I think today I will concentrate as never before.
When the infant bird in its mother's nest
attempts to swallow the offered worm,
I will sense that something immense and molten
has entered my body, my whole self
shuddering, expectant. I will be
the all night settling in of fog
into the farmer's field: through
the branches of its lone tree,
curling in and out of fencerows
and into furrows, like miniature roads,
to trace along the leaf-shoots
and yet-awakened bulgings of dirt.
I will slowly evaporate like raindrops
pooled in the mailbox's back left corner.
The wingspan of the smallest bird—
whose name I don't know—I will also be.
And the incremental progress of moss.
And the full force of the falling acorn
denting the dust. I will think hard
into the space the owl stares into—I will be
the tremble the rabbit tries to keep a secret.
Yesterday I ran loose and aloof across the globe.
I pray no one noticed the fool I was.
There are most likely almost-avalanches
high on mountain slopes, but yesterday
I would not have known this.
To be the last holding molecule
before assent and plunge and downrush.
To be the boulder, unmoved for centuries,
moved. If I truly concentrate, it is possible
I can be the faltering heartbeat
catching itself before too late.
And the tails of tadpoles clouding creek shallows.
And the next of kin when notified.
And the next to last hem in the first shirt
my great-grandmother made
for one of the four boys she lost
before the century was new.
I could be the first mold on the fresh tombstone
just put out today. Or the old road,
now grown up, that led the last generation
back along the ridge to pay respects.
Also the wind-tossed sage grass keeping time.
And the bonnet strings wet from the infant's mouth.
If I concentrate enough, it is possible
a fish will jump in the river bend
near my grandfather's home,
and I will be every last
flung water-fleck, shining with sunrise,
back into the coming back
to still stillness.
Jeff Hardin, 1999.