Oh, This Inability To Throw Away Life, To Still Keep It Despite... Poem by RIC BASTASA

alone in the house
early morning, it rains

and i stop doing the usual
and listen to

the patting rain beside my
window

a humming bird comes to join
flapping its wings

and stares at myself staring
to it too

i know now how an earthworm
beneath the humus

too sings its song though
no one sees how it does such

feat, such happy moment, too,
alone beneath

and so i learn, that even in
one's being abandoned,

if studied too well, and
adapted to it, the heart still

knows how to sing, the mind
still opens

like the rest of the other
lives to the world still gaping

oh, this inability to throw away
life, to still keep it despite...