When I Can Do Nothing Else Today

by James Crews

Let me pause in the softening field
like a bed stripped bare of its sheet
and find spinach still growing there
in neat rows after months of snow.
Let me pick a few of the new leaves
and feast on them with sun slanting
welcome in my winter eyes, exciting
my skin to shivers. And let me savor
the sweetness of meager spring light
already turned to sugar in this green
I chew along with a few grains of sand
that remind me always to make the time
to kneel and pray like this.