This hard park bench by the lakeside
offers me somehow to think of Elijah.
It is his only quiet moment, perhaps,
when he hears what the English Bible
translates the word ruah into that is all we know,
or maybe all we want to know –
sitting on a park bench watching
a mother mallard exercise her heron-
tempting brood of puff balls –
all we want to know of the soul.
The still, small voice: “Ruah,”
the smallest emotion of moving air.
Those paddling puff balls.
And the heron, treading just as softly
in the early summer reeds.
and the pike, skulking his way
in the early summer cabbage weeds.
Say it with such a quiet voice
that only the down on the smallest
molecule can feel your breath.
*
At a picnic table nearby,
a quiet violence of dispute:
“This isn’t your table.
We don’t have anything for you.
Get away.”
She looks at him and asks,
“Aren’t even the dogs given scraps
from the picnic basket?”
He sits down with her, and I cannot hear the down
of his breath of apology.
They eat and feed
the circling dogs.
