Tithing
Every tenth kiss, scrap of starlight
or new theory about black holes or dark matter,
every tenth time I look at the dress of your body
and feel the wind underneath it,
every tenth drink of moonlight and murmur of the sea,
every tenth kindness and patented innovation
on gentleness,
every tenth second when the path becomes clear
and I feel my life belongs to me,
every tenth time I'm comfortable
that a shrug is my lucidity
about the mirror and what it wants,
and every tenth leaf, blade of grass, flower petal,
thorn, root, and tendril,
every tenth stoma and stamen, slandered weed
and celebrated rose, every tenth sigh of a tree,
square foot of shade, and every cell
and miracle of chlorophyll we can spare,
goes into the well of the next world, the better world,
the world that learns from our mistakes,
the world with an appetite for ashes,
the world that loves anaphora
if the repeated word and honor
is love,
so that long after we are gone,
well beyond the memory of the few that remember
we have been forgotten,
someone will notice everywhere
that we did not carve our names in trees,
or bulldoze them, or tell them in their sleep
that they are no more than lumber,
no more than the seeds of the home
we never had and the houses we burned down
BOB HICOK’s Water Look Away will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2023. Read more.