Kinnell in a Garage Time

I went into the garage to clear

Some trash into their bins and caught my eyes

Looking at the stack of books we have stored there,

Some classics, some not so, and then all but buried

There, the one, the master for me, 

A book of Kinnell’s gallant strokes.

So plentiful in your pages, in simplicity, in regular

To explain the heart of being, the felt moment,

As Fergus sinks deeper in his preponderance

Of innocence 

Of love and loving, 

Whatever, as you said,

What it is we mean and want to mean, is all

We want and need.

I was quiet and still there in the garage, all of it

Ready to be done and doing, sledges, axes and mixes,

Yet stilled in that moment and your words, just to be

Mattered sometime for some, who want to feel

It, who care less about knowing it. In that silent

Stack of feelings I could be together with them.

(Sometimes it’s personally important to remember that there is such a thing as poetry and poets as mindful as Galway Kinnell. Pick up any of his creations and feel the click of the human spirit.)