Watering a Stone

for Robert Bly

The man reads Bly and thinks he is nothing. 

Then says, “That’s not quite right.”

“He has just squeezed more from the stone.”

Maybe labor isn’t necessary to write poems. 

Does the sparrow labor when singing? 

Or the meadowlark, along his dusty road?

Winter says, “We are all children of suffering.”

Then spring trots along and exclaims,

“Rebirth comes after sorrow!”

All of this imagery can get tiring. But how 

else to live?—can we ever truly separate 

from the great ebb and flow?