You Are Made of Grace

What beauty the world holds cupped between
light and dark,
everything mortal,
rising with the sun, the grass bright with the shine of rain.
We have just had news of you
intubated, sedated.
Bilateral orbital fractures and more
to the bones
of your beautiful face.
A question of cognitive consequence.
Yet gratefully, this is no day to die.
Not with the buff seed heads waving, the geese
serene on the lake,
the russet and ocher of the last leaves dissolving
in a bowl of beauty.
How fragile our grip on this world.
Everything changed in a moment,
like an earthquake along the far side of the continent
and yet in your cocoon
of gauze you are made of grace and glow.
Quick pulse,
the smallest pressure of your hand,
an eyelid opened—
bring hope. These stubborn burrs in the dog’s coat,
are like everything fractured, pulled apart,
yet when the gaze lifts, change to spiraled light and seeds of
milkweed, floating.