Day Seven

Who wouldn’t get tired shoveling mountains into place, or plowing oceans with the tongue that spoke and split open the darkness like a coconut?

Come clamshells and salmon eggs, he called, come anemones and coral, come dolphin’s giggle and sheen of the blue whale’s back, the volcano’s belch, sandbars and seaweed, foam singing in the pelicans’ wake.

Come thunder-hoofed caribou, come spittle of wolves and leopards, come iguanas tearing bushes, anacondas in drenched pits, the rhinoceros’ moan, dung beetles and kola trees. Come man and woman dredged from silt, stumbling the foothills, bone levers to hoist the beasts from soil, teeth to chew and swear, hair to clean, to pluck.

Who wouldn’t tire of piling igneous shelves or bundling storms, sowing black rain in onion fields, smell of wet ground rising in the pheasants’ heartbreaking cry?

Come Maker, on this seventh day of your beautiful clutter, and climb a staircase of stars to your bed. Pull up the covers: ocean waves, wheatfields, lengthening shadows.