I guess it will have to be enough
just watching the ticker-tape river,
whose sum is never in, tally light
through its sulky brown waters.
If the winds won’t catechize me
in any grass-roots religion,
I’ll have to do the best I can:
justify my margins, hem my desires,
wade deeper into the cosmic overwhelm,
the gladiatorial mayhem that frames us.
And it will have to be enough
that a pheasant barks hoarse threats
at a neighbor’s dog, enough to hear
seedpods clatter like tiny gourds,
enough learning the habits
of the peppermint starfish.
If mum’s the word, faith lies
in the details: the semaphores of flight,
the Morse codes of the heart.
It will have to be enough
to build a congregation of poems
from what is shrouded from view
the pink wings of the city—will tremble
if I bid the waters advance.