I’m screening pea gravel from the manure pile,
watching for worms that I catch in a bucket
for the compost. It’s like composing a poem.

When I look up, I see three deer next door,
running in mad circles, leaping:
my joy and theirs in this circling dance.

Later, I look up again, to see a bear
in full pirouette in the garden,
grabbing apples from the tree

we didn’t pick.
I shout and he retreats,
over the fence and up the hill.

I think that’s it for the day,
but then a flicker who has found the tomatoes
in the greenhouse, bangs himself
against the glass.
Terror, his own fan dance,
until he finds the open door.

This day of joy and terror: a mirror for the world’s two step,
its broken waltz.

© by Wendy Morton.
Used with the author’s permission.