Free Late in the Day by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

monotheistic religions, privileging humanity’s relationship with the divine, encourage arrogance. Yet even in that hard soil, poetry will find the language of compassionate fellowship with our fellow beings.
    The seventeenth-century Christian mystic Henry Vaughan wrote:
    So hills and valleys into singing break,
    And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue,
    While active winds and streams both run and speak,
    Yet stones are deep in admiration.
    By admiration, Vaughan meant reverence for God’s sacred order of things, and joy in it, delight. By admiration, I understand reverence for the infinite connectedness, the naturally sacred order of things, and joy in it, delight. So we admit stones to our holy communion; so the stones may admit us to theirs.

RELATIONS
The Small Indian Pestle at the Applegate House
    Dense, heavy, fine-grained, dark basalt
    worn river-smooth all round, a cylinder
    with blunt round ends, a tool: you know it when
    you feel the subtle central turn or curve
    that shapes it to the hand, was shaped by hands,
    year after year after year, by women’s hands
    that held it here, just where it must be held
    to fall of its own weight into the shallow bowl
    and crush the seeds and rise and fall again
    setting the rhythm of the soft, dull song
    that worked itself at length into the stone,
    so when I picked it up it told me how
    to hold and heft it, put my fingers where
    those fingers were that softly wore it down
    to this fine shape that fits and fills my hand,
    this weight that wants to fall and, falling, sing.
Incense
    for H.F.
    The match-flame held to the half-inch block
    catches, and I blow it out.
    The flame grows and flashes
    gold, then shrinks and almost dies
    to a drop of spectral blue
    that detaches, floats,
    a wisp of fire in air, dances
    high, a little higher, is gone.
    Now
    from the incense smouldering
    sweet smoke of cedar rises
    a while like memory.
    Then only ashes.
Kitchen Spoons
    New
    My spoon of Spanish olive wood
    from the Olive Pit in Corning,
    Tehama County, California,
    just off the I-5,
    is light but has a good heft.
    Short and well rounded,
    the right size to stir with,
    it’s at home in my hand.
    Matte brown of olive meat,
    dark streaks like olive skin,
    its grain is clear and fluent.
    The grain of a wood
    is the language of the tree.
    I oil the spoon with olive oil
    and it tells me grey-green leaves,
    brief fragrant blossom-foam,
    tough life, deep roots, long years.
    Spain that I have never seen.
    California, and summer, summer.
    Old
    My plated steel mixing spoon
    is from our first apartment,
    on Holt Avenue in Macon,
    Georgia, in 1954, the downstairs
    of widow Killian’s house, furnished
    with her furniture and kitchenware.
    An ordinary heavy tablespoon,
    plain, with a good balance,
    the left side of the end of the bowl
    misshapen, worn away
    by decades, maybe a century,
    of a right-handed person
    mixing and beating with it.
    First Mrs Killian, then me.
    I liked it so well that when we moved
    I asked her could I take it.
    That old thing? My goodness, yes,
    with a soft laugh,
    take it if you want it, child.
Earthenware
    Old clay pot
    stained brown
    cooked a lot
    used to be
    full of beans
    in the oven
    over and over
    washed clean
    time and again
    baked clay
    some day
    had to crack
    bones words
    pot-shards
    all go back
Kinship
    Very slowly burning, the big forest tree
    stands in the slight hollow of the snow
    melted around it by the mild, long
    heat of its being and its will to be
    root, trunk, branch, leaf, and know
    earth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.
    Rootless and restless and warmblooded, we
    blaze in the flare that blinds us to that slow,
    tall, fraternal fire of life as strong
    now as in the seedling two centuries ago.
Western Outlaws
    I celebrate sagebrush,
    scrub-oak, digger pine, juniper,
    the despised and rejected
    or grudgingly accepted
    because nothing else grows here.
    They’re the ones who won’t give in
    to us, ornament our