YOU MAY NOT KNOW THEM

Chance and fate, we fly through time
on pinball ricochets and peg collisions
with bells and whistles, defying gravity

until our turn is done. Few measure each
extended breath or look to granite peaks
with awe, but early-on someone calls –

a distant whisper or the wild songs
that resonate beyond our knowing –
and they choose, drawn like water

to its groove, the gravity of grounded
things that grow, that root, that leaf
that fruit, that bear and live to bear

again like grass with rain. Your hands
may not show calloused content, nor
eyes absorb a lifelong harvest, but

they are scattered here and there
like grazing cattle, simple people
who feed themselves – who feed us all.