Sonnet: Praise for ordinary wonder

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Killdeer, by John James Audubon
from the book The Birds of America

“The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work,
we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies."

—Lewis Hyde, The Gift, p. 25

Praise for ordinary wonder

The linen of a killdeer’s breast below

his throated rings flies suddenly before

the car and dips beneath a corn row.

Mundane the days can stretch, an endless floor

of samenesses, the tapering of leaves

of each and every fern, the ottoman

with piled familiar books, where villainies

and graces eternally have fallen.

But always I will honor the counting

of ten toes, digging into the blanket

in the burial of the day, not mourning

next day’s clone of this one with regret.

For in between the copies of each day’s

roads and words, a bird flies, and I'm amazed.

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