When I am working all day indoors

by Lucy Adkins

When I am working all day indoors
-after David Budbill

running the Swiffer across the floors,
sliding Windex on the glass
of the coffee table, dusting, arranging,
moving this to there, all the things
we people do—as they say—to make
a house a home, I think of Mary Oliver
up before the sun and outside
to see what deer there are to see,
what egrets and heron, what great
horned owl and goldfinch are out
living their lives as they were born
to do; and when I think of the wealth
of my cupboards—three sets of dishes,
plates and cups and saucers,
the cereal bowls and ice cream
bowls, bowls for soup and drinking tea,
I look out to the chickadee
at the birdbath dipping her beak
gently in the water, then tilting her head
back up to swallow, or I think of an ant
rolling a crumb of bread along the ground,
a berry; and I know there is a heron
in me who waits on long stilt legs,
a deer lifting her head to the wind.
I know there is an animal-bird-bee
in me who loves life and tenaciously
clings to it, looks for the goodness
in it, every day.