The Meeting House: Lyme, Connecticut, 1666 (audio only)
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Recorded at the Chancellors Reading, Poets Forum 2015. NYU Skirball Center. New York City.
Reverend Walter Peters, All Angels’ Church, November 18, 1849
What if to taste and see, to notice things,
to stand each is up against emptiness
for a moment or an eternity—
images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon—
is the main reason we’re on the planet.
The food’s here of the first crow to arrive,
Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.