It is easier to be compassionate when one has time: I
took strawberries to the old woman
who lives down the road. I helped another one to her car.
A butterfly lay on the dirt
road and I picked it up by its wing. Already in writing
it, the event has changed; say I saw
right away the butterfly's body was crushed, say its wing
smudged my thumb. Say it
rained all day and all yesterday and ruined the
strawberries in the field, so that leaves me at
the old lady's door empty-handed. I am done with
compassion: I wish someone would
tell me to stop, to get down on the floor with the dog,
where I could admire light from
the window coming through glass vases. So it is a small
thing, change of self, change of
light. Already what I meant to say is further away than
when I began; the question is
reduced to whether the dog barked when our real estate
agent unrolled her yellow tape
measure. Or whether the lilting bird in the pines kept
calling its two-step call into the day,
into me.