More on: Poetry

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?

This is terror
and this must be how it happens—how need

alchemizes into belief.

not in weakness, but in tender
resolution to give way, be broken. . .

The kettle begins to sing
the one note of its one song.
The day becomes itself beyond
the glass of the kitchen window.