Someday I Must Sing a Song of Praise

Someday I must sing a song of praise:

to the bricks, their reds

and browns reflected on the river,

and to the immigrant faces that roam my city

long after the mills have closed,

the imprint on my child's face --

a man in the wheat field with a scythe--

the field all brown and gold!

And somewhere in that painting is a castle,

perhaps behind the hill, and in the castle

a tapestry containing all things--

above all, the explanation why

men are old when they are born.

Someday I must sing a song of praise

to the small white petals bred

from the heartache of winter's loneliest

peasants (apple trees),

to the fireflies’ light,

the songs of children praising mud in summer;

their knees bruised like the bows of rowboats.

To their skin rubied and leathered,

And dressed in a room of pressed white curtains

with little balls begged from each knot.

To the leaves curling up from the cool river air,

a woodpecker, and the voices of chimneys:

Lucinda, Lucinda, over here, I'm over here--