Once again I have consigned my pain to words
    Its reflection is offered to me
    An acquaintance approaching from behind
    As I stand by a darkened window

            He sings for sweet angels of the air
            Deliberate and light-footed
            As a boy walking rails to the next siding
            Balanced
            Not on iron spiked to sleepers in beds of stone
            But on lines of desire, hope, and fear
            Walking always with his dead

            I have heard you
            In rooms close with the scents
            Of old wool clothing and cut flowers
            Sunday after Sunday
            Your voice recalling the slow, incessant rhythm
            Of a bell tossed on its marker buoy
            By gray swells under a hard bank of clouds

            Owls’ calls have abandoned me
            Delicate sounds before first light
            Betray only the restlessness of small birds
            In this lull before the water
            Claims its color from the emerging horizon

            My tears carry the salt of dead oceans
            To the new clear-cut
            Among the absence of oak, poplar, and ash
            A wood thrush passes, dazed as I am

    Among the buildings of Norfolk
    Migrant blackbirds bear
    Sunset on their wings
    Moving in gusts and eddies
    While twilight plays in the windows' reflections
    Rising from ground shadows
    To overwhelm the sky
    They are unpredictable and wild
    As milkweed down
    Or what we call mind

    Yes, I have held to the calm sterility of winter
    The peace that is near death
    Near nothing

    When the short days leave time
    For watching Orion
    On his silent stalk across the nigh

            There is something in the sound
            Of an axe biting green wood
            That fills this arm of the forest
            Calling all the years and all the dead
            Here to accompany my song of fires to come
            My father hitting the same notch

    The black wind of March awakens me
    Not the bright and powerless sun
    Or the persistent song of the mockingbird
    Guarding a nest still empty
    Or rather a nesting place
    With only the anticipation of twigs and straw

        It is night
        Shade has escaped from the corners of buildings
        And from the leaves of trees
        Congealing in blackness
        Too thick to be cut by street lights or neo