Before the field is broken by the hand,
the cloud is loaded and the season planned.
He sends the rain the way a house sends bread,
and wakes the seed that lay as good as dead.
The desert, which has nothing of its own,
finds in the morning what the night had sown:
a thin white covering no sickle cut,
enough to answer hunger, not to glut.
What yesterday could save will fail by noon;
the faithfulness is measured to the sun.
The ravens find the man no road can reach,
and leave their portion, and return to each
their ordinary sky. They do not know
the name they carry, only where to go.
A widow’s jar, drawn down almost to dust,
will not admit that this must be the last.
The flask keeps pace with what the cooking needs;
the flame continues after worry pleads.
What holds here is not wealth laid up in grain,
but oil that answers oil, and meal that answers meal.
See how the lilies take their cloth and wear
what no one wove, and finer than a king could bear.
The sparrow does not plant or bind or keep,
and still is fed, and still is not too cheap
to count. He dresses grass that burns to smoke,
and fills the throat that has no word it spoke.
If field and bird are answered without speech,
what finer need is set beyond His reach?
The table laid in front of those who hate
is not a show of surplus, but of state.
The later rain arrives when mouths are dry,
and barns that stood wide open crowd the sky.
A river breaks where every map said sand;
the rock, once struck, becomes a watered land.
He leads beside the streams that bring men back,
and spreads a pasture where the ground was black.
The cup is not a measure, but a tide;
it climbs the rim, and does not drop, and does not hide.
What we call extra, heaven counts as due—
the faithfulness that keeps, and starts anew.
