The soup is better having room to steep

in the deeper time of its own goodness.

Many things unite in one great thing.

We learn hunger.

 

The ground, now patched and sown together

with summer’s glowing refuse, is somehow brighter –

having taken its time.

We learn beauty.

 

Her pleasure, no fait accompli, 

but in a reverence for slow heights.

Climb slowly this peak.

We learn desire.

 

Her tiny immensity, a sacred squalor, protrudes

nose first, dark to light, damp and cold –

one last hurrah of anonymity before donning

the first breaths of vulnerability.

We learn awe.

 

Pulled nose first into the warmth

of kitchen bread, newly plump and rising to greet us

square in tongue and tonsil, teasing

and teaching the crust-browned life.

We learn perfection.

 

Shoes, worn and well-gravelled, grind away

at the miles. A distance made less with repetition –

repetition of repeated renewals of the long

overcoming of road.

We learn perseverance.

 

And, in all of it remains the best of all our waiting.

One arrives, caught in the minutiae of the cosmic unseen.

Here to surprise our own expectations.

Come to convince us of lost remembrances.

The one great beauty in our catalogue of fear.

We learn salvation.