Was I the only fool in Kentucky to bake bread today? To sweat by my oven taking in yeast’s primal scent? But there was also this: I befriended the sweltering butterflies seeking a bit of breeze or even making their own, the sun’s hot light reflected on their church-window wings. And the turkey tails basking on a log become beach towel doing their job of chomping through wood to produce frilly fruit, turning a profit on what seemed rotten. And there will always be lichens (we wouldn’t be here without them, they say), sunning like the rock stars they are in the realm of teamwork, part algae, part bacteria, top-dressed with fungus.
And if we don’t learn
we’ll be a manna-promise
shriveled in our skins