Tom Hennen: "Love for Other Things"

It’s easy to love a deer
But try to care about bugs and scrawny trees
Love the puddle of lukewarm water
From last week’s rain.
Leave the mountains alone for now.
Also the clear lakes surrounded by pines.
People are lined up to admire them.
Get close to the things that slide away in the dark.
Be grateful even for the boredom
That sometimes seems to involve the whole world.
Think of the frost
That will crack our bones eventually.

"Love for Other Things" by Tom Hennen. Text as published in Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).

Art credit: Untitled photograph, perhaps by ask4christina. The caption is a quote from John Muir: "God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild."