I Don't Find It Hard To Love The World

I don’t find it hard to love the world
in its big, wide open expanses,
its prairie grasses and battalions of geese
soldiering on in perfect v-formation.
What is difficult is to love the losses,
the million small ways in which it seems
life is reduced, instead of grown.
What is difficult is to lay down in the
brittle brown grass and look up at the sky
to listen to the wild geese honking
disappearing across the horizon,
their cry moving into my heart,
echoing my own buried grief.
The beetle doesn’t bother with such things
I don’t think,
neither the tortoise or the eagle.
Rotting stumps decay and become a home for eggs,
swamps stagnate and transform into breeding grounds,
one tree is chopped down, and another,
differently sized and shaped,
but equal in it’s wide arms for holding,
invites the nest
built twig by twig:
flight in and flight out.
It's true,
I don’t find it hard to love the world
in its fullness and welcome
what is hard is to say goodbye,
over and over again.