Coming across on this ground
from the road, through the bluestem,
to see the wild geraniums,
I came close to cutting my foot
on a beer bottle fragment.
I notice along the base
of the great trunk a blackened
area -- from an old weed fi re,
I suppose. There is a weed
whose name I don't know -- dark green,
tall, it too is blooming now --
greenish-white little fl owers
in closely set clusters like
clover-blossoms. -- Sacred ground,
as our life is not; and ground
maybe inexhaustible,
too, in its way. -- Yesterday,
cutting into a seed pod,
prodding it with the knife point,
hunting for the small white seeds,
trying to fi nd some pattern,
I saw a small white spider
emerge from the packed cotton
and, while I watched, go racing
away across the table.