Practice

Whether meditation or prayer,
I call what I do each day practice
because I know I’ll always be a novice
seated at the piano, playing
my scales, doing whatever it takes
to make music out of touch and air.

Sun slants through leaded glass
as it has year after year
across the seasons in this house,
but there is nothing typical about
October light or this Christmas cactus
with tight pink buds about to bloom.

Nothing typical about the whisper
of dust on the table stirred by
my footfalls as I walk to the kitchen,
imagining each mote as a planet
on which unseen creatures make their home,
wondering what life might wait

in the infinite space beyond
dust-houses and dust-mountains,
dust-cars and dust-markets,
beyond the layers of their own
version of dust on a table
near the window by which they kneel.