They gave him soup so that when the daylight 

Broke upon the saplings shivering beside the river

Warmed the stones, their rinds caressed to smooth dark pearls,

Patience endless and divine

Held the mountain peaks aloft against the white-hot forge of time

Inspired newfound reverence in the chickadees, 

Lilting syllables among the murmuring of the pines

Shooed drunken half-sleep from a fox’s softened eyes

Bared down on the lanes and fields that laid naked to the sky

Soured all the fruit 

Baked all the bread

Found a place of calm once more inside the seasoned farmhand’s head

Filled up the valleys from each hollow to each brim

Dared the clouds to stake their claim

Doused in color kerosene all the kindling laid by dark

Brought back to life those embers whose last breath still held the hearth

Roared into existence

Imbued pride in every whim 

Called out to souls unbound

Threw pure electric bliss at earthworms rising from the ground

Took all the might of mankind, all the joy destroyed by care, 

Held them, 

Whispered weak goodbyes, 

Spread their ashes in the air

Rose loud above the din of Earth’s beloved kindred song

Cracked open biding chrysalides,

Made the world anew as penance for a future marred with wrong

Reassured the waning spirits that they needn’t hold for long

Teased sublimity from tomorrow’s secrets yet untold

Bestowed doubt upon the young

Nurtured comfort in the old

Shattered diamonds into spectral splinters

Fought the frost from night’s approach

Seated delicately in a familiar autumnal throne, 

Fulfilled a Promise given in the depths of dawn, 

Now kept in fading rays, and in supple twilight shone

His memory, once bathed by hearty hands,

Sight coaxed back to health and grace

Blood flushed with verdancy

Feet firm and fortunate, 

Poised to move themselves again

When the daylight takes him with it, for a while, on it’s ever-lonesome loop

He would savor all, and keep his pace,

Purposeful and driven by the perfect verve of soup.