There is a
mountain beyond a field of wildflowers
beyond the rail fence beyond the garden
of daisies, larkspur, evening primrose,
and others that have claimed squatter’s
rights.
I can see the three-peaked snow-capped
mountain—
I imagine the ridges to be a high priest
flanked by two altar servers in white
surplices—
from my kitchen as I open the Chateau
L’Evangile merlot
and gaze at this layered study in
perspective.
It is as if I were looking into a frame
hanging in a hushed room with wooden
floors
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And yet the scene changes
with the moving sun and seasons,
like Monet’s Haystacks or The
Houses of Parliament.
When summer heat smothers the helpless
plain,
the peaks dance like ballerinas
held hostage by a heat shimmer.
In the winter, these servants of the sky
are an exercise in lapidary,
etched like cut gems glistening
against a background that is painfully
blue.
Spring and fall are transitional phrases,
by turns cutting and stripping my garden
stalks
or swaying the field grasses with clean
zephyrs
or hazy incense offered to whatever god is
served
by these dimensions whispering “Closeness,
distance,
closeness, distance, but bow also to the
intermediary
that keeps them righteously apart.”
I sip the merlot and look at the garden,
fence, meadow, matin-covered mountain,
and realize that the world, organic and
mineral,
is circadian, evolving, rhyming with color
and shadow.
“Lord, it is good to be here,” St. Peter
said
as light and darkness and voices danced
around him.
It is good to be in my kitchen, grounded
by pots and pans and a vintage from the
valley below
even though the universe is still
expanding,
stars flying in all directions like
priests and ballerinas
and fireflies carrying seeds to distant
worlds.
I am content to raise a toast to humility
and be an infinitesimal part of this
kaleidoscopic show.
~William Hammett
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