The Keeper's Hand

I am learning the art of collecting light,

not sunlight, though that too deserves attention,

but the smaller illuminations. A stranger's unexpected smile

on the morning bus, the way steam rises

from coffee like a question mark dissolving.

My hands know the weight of apples,

how they fill a basket with their particular gravity,

each one a minor planet of sweetness and bite.

I gather them not because I'm hungry

but because gathering is its own kind of prayer,

a belief that abundance can be held,

even briefly, even when the season turns.

There are other harvests. Words overheard

in the produce aisle, a child explaining clouds

to her reflection in the freezer door. I pocket these

like stones from a meaningful shore,

turn them over later when the day grows thin.

What we keep, we become.

I am made of collected things.

Autumn markets and the smell of rain on pavement,

the particular silence after snowfall,

names of people I'll never see again

but whose laughter I carry like loose change.

My baskets overflow with the immaterial.

How it feels to finish a book at dawn,

the Architecture of certain sentences,

the way some songs return you to a moment

you didn't know you'd stored away.

This is the work, to notice, to hold,

to let the gathered weight of living

fill your arms until you understand,

we are both the harvest and the keeping,

both the fruit and the reaching hand.