"Meditation on the Limitation of Desire" by Rick Campbell

In this morning of cardinals
the neighbor's cattle low
and a dog—who knows its master?—
wails like a penitent awakened
not from nightmare, but just another
night's dream.

The cardinals are constant.
Warblers intermittent. Woodpecker
a surprise, each drumming new
and unexpected. Behind this,
every few minutes, a dove coos.

All of this seems now destination.
As if, like the armadillo
diligently shuffling through the brush
toward our garden, I too
have long been seeking this soil,
its grubs and worms.

Sometimes we stretch the metaphor
too thin, our artifice transparent
as the locust husks clinging
in afterlife to the loblolly's rough bark,
its darker sap. In this desire
to make ourselves one
with the world outside our skin
and blood, our frail but impassable
barriers, we miss the obvious—
that it is desire for the armadillo,
the hawk high in the soft sky,
the sun not yet fully above the trees
that makes us what we are,
not less than the song,
but someone listening, someone
wanting to sing.

...

Please join us in welcoming Rick Campbell to Poetry Night at Bistro 33 on Wednesday, May 6 beginnig at 9 p.m. in 226 F. Street, Davis, California.