Sonnet #413

 In the morning, what drags me from my bed

Are the creatures that demand my care: the fish

In their prison awaiting the warden’s blessed dish

The dog in her eternal restless need for sky and fed

A bit of meat. The plants in all their reaching, 

I baptize daily in the heat, and check  jewels

For disease or defeat. Just me, alone, how cruel

Would I move at all? Would I care to be teaching

Anyone the mysteries of time and ruins

Hide in a single bedroom, a single kitchen, alone

Swelling in a sadness that demands pills to go on

Leave eventually if I must to miserly atone

For what use is a man granted earth as dominion 

Without the work of it, the moving of bones and stones?