On Vocation
Someone asked if I served God
or mammon and I said
I’d go back and name the animals
if that could be allowed, slip among
the throngs of us created as we’re waiting
to be dubbed. To river-bathe
with fellow foundlings, jump up
from where I’m sitting under castor bean.
But it may be I’m counted on for nothing,
just a listening for seven-year cicadas, meanders
round the dew. May I do it with professional
esteem. I’d mostly hope to be a parson
of the treetops—how it pays me
to shoot the breeze.
