On Vocation
Someone asked if I served God
or mammon and I said
I’d go back and name the animals
if that could be allowed, slip among
the throngs of us created as we’re waiting
to be dubbed. To river-bathe
with fellow foundlings, jump up
from where I’m sitting under castor bean.
But it may be I’m counted on for nothing,
just a listening for seven-year cicadas, meanders
round the dew. May I do it with professional
esteem. I’d mostly hope to be a parson
of the treetops—how it pays me
to shoot the breeze.
Copyright © 2022 by Leslie Williams. This poem was first printed in TriQuarterly, Issue 162 (July 15, 2022). Used with the permission of the author.
Leslie Williams
Leslie Williams is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Matters for You Alone (Slant Books, 2024). Her book, Even the Dark (SIU Press, 2019), won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition and was a finalist for the Julia Ward Howe Award.
Williams’s other honors include the Bellday Prize, the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Individual Artist grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She lives in Massachusetts.