Rural Benediction Poem by Romella Kitchens

Graced to be out of town for the day.
The deer come down from those
Pennsylvania hills, untouched by fear, to
drink water from an impression of earth
repurposed by them as a pond.

Graced to know purer air instead of polluted;
the urban huddle and swelling masses silent
here, quiet, evaporated into stands of Oak, Elm
and wildflowers.

Graced to weep not due to sorrow but at
the taste of well water…
The clearer, un-flecked vision of the perfect sky.
A hawk flies overhead unaware of its fortune to
be here -- wrapped in the silk of a rural sky
like its father and many ages of fathers before
him.

The air moves kindly about us as if it has
no recollection of the discontent of storms and
seems to whisper:
"Graced.
Graced.
Graced."