Humans
To think we gathered here, however briefly,
on a strip of sand soon swallowed by the future,
to eat and drink and laugh, as if it mattered,
then turn, refreshed, toward ordinary ends—
by whose authority took we that pleasure
in the herons and the foxes and the whales,
yellow butter, orange lilies, cottontails
bouncing in the green of turnip beds—and then
by night, the wine and music in a glowing spiral,
spread above our lightened heads, the fragrant table
and the rest that emptied every hand of book or plough,
of weapon, needle, pen—and in whose mind
do we remember it, our loving, which is less than half the story
for we creatures rarely grateful, seldom sorry,
bent on shortening the temporary—who will stay?
Just this: by wondering, we learned to pray.
