More on: poetry

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.

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

This silence before
love pulls itself
apart, against
the current of its own
longing, is the most terrible
silence I know.

When I tilt the cup
it drains like a face.

We’re the seeds our mothers have been planting. If
X marks the spot, let’s dig up the whole alphabet.