The
blind windows
glisten
against
rain
and
wind, after
subsiding
seas with
corpses
floating
on the broken
tide. From
somewhere,
distant
voices call
for an accounting.
How
many
thousands
dead? Where
will the
living
go?
What will
it cost,
who pays?
But
the
old river
that nursed
this city
knows
its
answer.
Already
it finds
a new way
down,
eddying
against
what used
to be a
pier,
a
wall. Purling
water, a
tenor saxophone.
Make
me a pallet,
it sings.
Listen,
there’s
the
trumpet
calling
saints and
refugees.
A
few familiar
ghosts gather
under stars.
IF
YOU GO OUT LATE ENOUGH
far
into the woods where
it’s very
quiet,
and listen
beyond
your own pulse ticking
and
the susurrus of breath
and breeze,
could
you hear what you might
take
for
messages?
Deep
in the forests of stars
and
planets
so
many travelers trying
to get home
in
that immense dark
in
which even our Earth
shines
as
a direction point
when
viewed from a certain
perspective
and
the only illuminated
passage
is
the Milky Way.