Poem: The Sum of Small Things by Charlene Langfur

The Sum of Small Things

By Charlene Langfur
QuailBellMagazine.com

​​Everything right is about what I can’t see,
the big of the little, of seeds become sprouts
while I am asleep, work in increments,
light collecting, slim and luminent, and bold,
I know that is what I am and am able to do,
tracing patches of light on the floor, and more,

streaks of it on the doors, picking what is comely out of the blue,
what sticks longest, the light and the morning
and walking the dog past the palm trees, at a steady pace,
my dog leaping on and off, all thirteen pounds of her
and we’re moving together like an old couple does
finishing each other’s sentences, syllables, phrases.
The daily and the common, what rises off them,
over them, the auras and the light of everything in sight,
the break and staple of what sticks and stays,
flowers opening, the silver quarters I’ve thrown
in a porcelain dish to my bed for all of my life piling up
and up. One iota after another of a day expanding,
shrinking, the opal feathers of the roadrunner opening
up into the sun, an exceptional sight in the middle
of the ordinary, the passion of the little wren
in the trumpet flowers, you can tell how gigantic
all this is here, studying the flowers on another day,
small flight making a go of it, deep
living even in the midst of what is almost night