“God is in the details,”
I tell the kids
in the public school
at Milligan, Nebraska.
They wonder what I mean.
I tell them to look
out the window
at the spring fields
the mud coming up
just to the knee
of the small pig
in the far pasture.
They tell me
it’s not a knee
but a hock
and I hadn’t ought
to say things I know
nothing about. I say
the light on the mud
is pure chalcedony.
They say the mud
killed two cows
over the weekend.
I tell them the pig
is alive and the spring
trees are standing in a green haze.
They tell me school is out
in a week and they have to plant.
The grain elevator at the end
of Main Street stretches out
her blue arms. The kids say chutes.
Robert Frost
(1874 – 1963)
William Shakespeare
(1564 – 1616)
Maya Angelou
(1928 – 2014)
Pablo Neruda
(1904 – 1973)
Emily Dickinson
(1830 – 1886)
Langston Hughes
(1901 – 1967)
Rabindranath Tagore
(1861 – 1941)
William Wordsworth
(1770 – 1850)
Shel Silverstein
(1930 – 1999)
William Blake
(1757 – 1827)
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