More on: Poetry

Maybe I was too bus-lagged to haggle over
the price of a portent, much less a cheap
souvenir. . .

Bible open. On her lap. Same page for years.
Her white hair. Spooky red ink. Deuteronomy.

There are so many ways to fly and walk
in place I never move.

In my absence, one sprig of English ivy
has crept through a crack
under my window.

All at once the stillness breaks
into a great applause of wings, the mounting up
in doxology, the downsweep then
of many heads in prayer.

There will be thousands of warm nights

like this one, millions of the beetles, this whole darkened face
of earth erupting in brief constellations.

Praise the mockingbird,

unashamed that he is alone, praise the beetle,
the hornet, all night’s shy & vicious ornaments . . .

when I was young, his voice a low path through nightmare,
reading so that I wouldn’t dream of dying . . .

I read of a man a thousand miles south who heard a large crowd passing by.
He laid down his shears on his father’s land and joined the northbound caravan.

If there is
a God, is there such a thing

as holy regret for what he’s made?