When songs crept over the green
margins of the hills, I knew I was
back in favor with gods who rule each
 
square inch of this world: a god for grass,
another for rain. A god for leave-taking,
a god for coming home. No end to these
 
gods, the world fills with them, leaving
everything holy, even the ripped sleeve
of a dress you will never wear again,
 
a white dog with its furious yap, a
starfish shriveled in the morning sun.
This life’s shaped by secret tides
 
swirling like clothes in a washer: first
one color propelled into the foreground,
then usurped by another pressing against
 
the glass. Be hopeful: the world is full
of gods, you might even acquire one
for yourself. Or be the god of your own
 
small light, how it sparkles afresh in this
morning none of us expected to see.
Laundry hangs late on the clothesline,
 
colors faded by sun, but we can imagine
their original brightness, the shawl
embroidered with flowers, ourselves
 
washed in a great machine made only
of sky, rinsed by rain. All that clothes
our bodies and our hearts whirling in
 
the dense net of feeling. Be cheerful:
a thousand gods will hear you, each
rising ascendent to a small throne
 
occupied for its own brief time, then
succeeded by another, unending in
the catalogs of rain, the limpid stars.