I love to stay in bed
All morning,
Covers thrown off, naked,
Eyes closed, listening.
Outside they are opening
Their primers
In the little school
Of the cornfield.
There’s a smell of damp hay,
Of horses, laziness,
Summer sky and eternal life.
I know all the dark places
Where the sun hasn’t reached yet,
Where the last cricket
Has just hushed; anthills
Where it sounds like it’s raining,
Slumbering spiders spinning wedding dresses.
I pass over the farmhouses
Where the little mouths open to suck,
Barnyards where a man, naked to the waist,
Washes his face and shoulders with a hose,
Where the dishes begin to rattle in the kitchen.
The good tree with its voice
Of a mountain stream
Knows my steps.
It, too, hushes.
I stop and listen:
Somewhere close by
A stone cracks a knuckle,
Another turns over in its sleep.
I hear a butterfly stirring
Inside a caterpillar.
I hear the dust talking
Of last night’s storm.
Farther ahead, someone
Even more silent
Passes over the grass
Without bending it.
And all of a sudden
In the midst of that quiet,
It seems possible
To live simply on this earth.
– Charles Simic
memoryhouse 