It is true that long gray ears
and slow hitches of sound
are a donkey’s trademark.
Some say they are stubborn,
obstinate, stolid. If you ask me
this is more of their singular grace.
Donkeys are everything lucid and liquid
in their own dark-eyed meter of time.

I can be churning with things to do,
worries for the day and my own regrets:
Then the donkeys look at me
as if to say slow down.
One look and they have me
wanting to buckle my knees
to spend the day in the loose hay chewing
something other than what needs to be done.

Some things are reliable in life.
Wind will change.
Fog scatters in the sun.
Stars are still there in the daytime.
In their own time, donkeys
will fold their knees
to lie down and rest.